


Life After

by FamousWolf



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2018-08-22 07:42:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 107,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8278093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FamousWolf/pseuds/FamousWolf
Summary: Link comes to in the middle of an unfamiliar room, and Rhett is not much help in putting the pieces together.





	1. Lucidity

He didn't know what he'd expected, but this wasn't it.  The room was white, all of it, from the marble floor to the long angular couch, the bricks around the crackling fireplace, and the heavy curtains framing a large window that overlooked a mountain forest, also dusted white with fresh and ceaseless snow.  He didn't usually like white.  It tended to make him nervous.

But here he was, unmoving in the space and trying to remember when he'd arrived.  He knew that he'd only just walked in, but he couldn't remember where he'd come from.  It didn't bother him.  He couldn't remember when he'd last slept or eaten.  That didn't bother him, either.  He sensed that he was isolated, that he had separated himself from his everyday surroundings, but he had no desire to return. 

He moved to the couch and sat down, slowly sinking back into surprisingly plush cushions.  His arms wrapped around himself as his eyes fell closed. 

Where he anticipated black, he saw red, streaks of hot light flashing through his vision, inspiring an instant and powerful headache, originating from his left temple and momentarily blinding him, even after he opened his eyes again. 

"Whoa, buddy.  You okay?"

Link jumped, shocked by the sudden proximity of a familiar voice.  To his right, Rhett was lowering himself onto the couch, extending a mug of hot chocolate. 

Instead of reaching for the mug, Link turned around, looking behind him to find a silver kettle steaming on a stovetop at the edge of a small kitchen. 

"You were back there?" he asked, surprised at how hard he had to push his voice through his throat.  Rhett chuckled and narrowed his eyes.  They nearly glowed above his black sweater.

"...yes?  I was making this.  You asked for it," he answered, offering the mug again.  Link accepted it and felt a wave of understanding flow through him as the heat from the mug warmed his hands.  He hadn't realized how cold they were. 

"I felt like I was alone for a second."

Rhett laughed nervously.  "Oh.  I was quiet, I guess," he agreed, sipping from his own steaming cup.  "You feel okay?"

Link met his gaze and easily ignored the concern flickering through his eyes.  He sighed and smiled.

"I feel great.  I feel...content.  I want for nothing," he said easily.

"Oh, yeah?  Well, look at you.  You did say you wanted to take a snooze, though, remember?"

He couldn't remember saying it, but he implicitly trusted Rhett's words and found himself nodding along to them.

Rhett stood, gesturing toward his place on the couch.  "You enjoy your drink, and maybe lie down for a bit.  I'll wake you up when I come back."

Link did not know where Rhett was going.  He didn't think to ask; it didn't matter.  He knew only that he was stepping around the back of the couch and out of his field of view, and without someone to talk to, there was little point in fighting the nap he hadn't known he'd wanted.  He finished only half of his drink before setting it on the birch coffee table before him and stretching himself out on his stomach.  Sleep caught him quickly, and the bright room faded away.

 

* * *

 

A sliver of sunlight had broken through the wooden blinds and landed over Link's eyes, patiently drawing him out of a black and heavy slumber.  He fought waking as he always did, by pulling the blanket up to his chin and curling into a tight ball.  But doing so forced him to acknowledge the change in setting: he was in a bed.

Blue eyes shot open, darting around the room until the mind behind them settled into recognition.  Link sighed a laugh and shook his head at his own bedroom.  He extended his arms above the covers, body pulling tight into a deep stretch, before pushing himself up and out of the bed.  As he turned to straighten the covers, he unthinkingly glanced twice at his nightstand, paying close attention to the contrast of dark grain streaking through the ash colored wood.  His attention always wandered in the mornings before he had full control of his thoughts.

A deep yawn traveled through him as he padded down the hallway.  The smell of coffee drew him toward the kitchen, but he stopped short upon reaching the living room.  On his couch, picking at the remains of an oversized muffin, sat Rhett, cross-legged, staring up at the television.  For a fraction of a second, Link wanted to question his presence.  But the moment passed, and with it, his concern.  A subconscious answer fell into place, closing his mouth before words could form. 

"Mornin'," Rhett said without looking at him.  "I brought you one, too.  It's on the counter.  Blueberry.  It's all they had."

"That's fine.  Thanks, man," he answered, crossing into the kitchen and finding a cup of coffee sitting on the dark granite countertop next to a muffin.  He grabbed both and returned to the living room, dropping onto the couch opposite Rhett and mirroring his posture. 

"I had a weird dream."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah.  I was in this white room.  It was like a ski lodge or something, but not cabin-y.  I mean, I guess there was a fireplace..."

"Ski lodge, huh?" Rhett asked, still staring at the television.

"You were there."

At this, he turned, looking directly into Link's face, eyebrow arched.  "Oh?  Could I fly?

Link laughed dismissively.  "No, I don't think so.  What kind of question..."

"Doesn't hurt to ask.  Let me fly next time."

Link nodded and began picking at his muffin, pulling it into several pieces before losing interest and setting it on the coffee table and picking up his coffee.  He sat in silence for a long moment, watching his drink steam from within his hands, gaze never flickering toward the television.  It made no noise and so could not catch his attention.  Instead, he focused his thoughts on the day ahead, and upon doing so, found a mental blank slate.  When no amount of internal backtracking could fill in his agenda, he dug the heel of his hand into his eye and shook his head. 

"What?" Rhett asked, attention divided between him and the silent television.

"I must not be fully awake yet, man.  I can't even remember what we're doing today," he explained, ending with a sheepish laugh to hide a creeping sense of fear inspired by sudden uncertainty.

"That's 'cause we're not doing anything today," Rhett replied.  Still staring into his coffee, Link's peripheral vision caught Rhett pick up the remote, press a button, and quickly re-place it on the coffee table.  When he finally looked up at the television, it was off.  Rhett yawned and extended his long arms over his head, speaking through the stretch.

"Completely open day.  Can do whatever you want."

"Saturday," Link said, testing himself and relaxing a bit when Rhett didn't correct him.  "What do I want to do with my miraculously unscheduled day?"

"If I could make a recommendation..." Rhett said, pulling his knees into his chest and wrapping his arms around them.  Link nodded, prompting him to continue.  "It's awfully nice outside.  Clear skies, plenty warm.  Good beach day, if you're up for the trip."

"Yeah.  Okay," Link agreed without thinking.  "Can we just sit for a minute before we go?  I feel like I never get a quiet morning like this."

It was true; he felt a stark contrast between the start of this day and his usual routine, though he couldn't pinpoint exactly what was so different.  Naturally, he would be preparing for work during the week, but something else seemed abnormally peaceful about the quietness of his house.  It was a silence that felt both comfortable and lonesome, and when he thought about it too much, he felt grateful that Rhett was there with him.  Even if he didn't know why.

 

 

 "Link, buddy.  You in there?  It's time to wake up."

He jerked into consciousness from the passenger seat of Rhett's car.  They had parked in a nearly empty lot at the edge of a surprisingly isolated beach.

"I fell asleep?" Link asked, wiping his mouth instinctively.  Rhett laughed. 

"Long drive with no radio.  You didn't stand a chance.  Let's go," he said, swinging open his door and stepping out into the sun.  He grabbed two beach chairs from the rear compartment, and Link followed suit, collecting a large bag of towels and water bottles from the backseat before walking onto the sand. 

"Where is everyone?" he asked, admiring the rarity of an abandoned California beach. 

"Good question.  Kids are in school, I guess.  And we just happened to escape the working world."

Link nodded, despite the twinge of doubt in the back of his mind.

They crossed toward the water and set up their chairs, each sighing heavily as he sank into a canvas seat.  Their feet buried themselves, legs stretching across the warm, silky sand as the ocean lapped upon the shore only a few yards away.  A full and comfortable silence settled between them, broken occasionally by chatty seagulls down the beach or pelicans sailing over the water.  Link exhaled a long breath and let his muscles give way to the chair, soaking in the sun and breeze while his mind went pleasantly blank. 

But he was what he was, and the quietude could not last forever.  Something slipped through his happy daze, a single grain of sand scratching against the glass of his contentedness.  He could not put his finger on it, but it caused him to open his eyes.  When he did, he found that the sun had fallen behind a thick grouping of clouds that he had not seen before.  The previously clear sky had gone gray, a hazy high fog stretching for miles in all directions.  He squinted into the glare and turned to look at Rhett, who hadn't been bothered by the change in weather.  His eyes remained closed, face upturned toward the diluted sun.

"Do I have something on my face?" he asked, causing Link to flinch at being caught staring.  He laughed it off and pulled his feet from the sand.

"Nothing out of the ordinary," he said, his heart not in the joke.  Rhett opened his eyes at the distracted voice.

"What's up?"

Link shook his head and ran a hand through his hair, answering, "Nothing, I guess.  Just got this weird feeling, like I was thinking about something, but I lost it."

Rhett chewed his bottom lip for a moment, then, with a surprising resolve, leapt up from his chair and extended his hand down to Link.

"Let's swim."

Link grabbed his hand and allowed Rhett to yank him up, launching him forward toward the water.  As he walked, he looked up and down the empty beach again.  Rhett's gaze remained forward, tied to the ocean.  Something about his lackadaisical reaction to their isolation brought Link's question into focus.

"Did you say it's a school day?  A work day?"

Rhett picked up his pace, walking quickly into the tide and laughing as it washed over his knees.  "The water feels amazing!  It's so warm," he called over his shoulder, pressing forward until he was waist-deep.  Link followed behind, shaking his head, but privately agreeing that the waves did feel nice.

"I thought we said it was Saturday," he persisted, now having to shout over the soft roar of the water. 

"Whoa, there's a real shelf right here.  Watch your step," Rhett shouted back, now far enough in that he could tread water.

"Hey!" Link shouted, quickly growing frustrated at Rhett's lack of acknowledgment.  He forced his body through the water, turning his back every few seconds to bear the brunt of a fresh wave.  After the third turn, he faced the open water again and found Rhett missing.  His stomach tightened at the empty expanse, and he froze, rocking with the water until a head broke the surface several yards out.  A long arm followed, waving him out beyond the rough waves, and he realized that he had stopped breathing.

As he swam toward Rhett, he tried again to work backward through his morning, the night before, and the events prior, thoughts racing to complete a seemingly simple task: identifying the day of the week.  He'd long lost the ability to touch bottom when he finally caught up to Rhett, no closer to answering his own question than when he'd started the swim.

"Rhett," he said, demanding attention by voicing the name.  Rhett looked at him, eyes wide in anticipation.  "You said it was Saturday.  Then you said it was a work day."

" _You_ said it was Saturday."

"Whatever.  I know," he paused to laugh at himself, hoping to hide the tremor of panic in his voice, "I know I sound crazy, but I just...what day is it, actually?"

Rhett turned to look out at the open sea, a sad half-smile on his face.  He sighed before he looked back. 

"What day does it feel like?"

"Don't play with me.  Can you just tell me?"

"It doesn't matter."

Link scoffed, arms starting to burn as they worked to keep him afloat.  "Are you kidding?  I feel like it matters.  I feel like it's pretty significant."

Rhett had opened his mouth to speak, but his voice was drowned out by a rush of water slamming into the side of Link's face, knocking him off balance and submerging him before he could regain his bearings.  While the world had gone quiet, it had sped up, newly wild water pulling him down and dragging him across the rocky sand, scraping and slicing the skin of his knees, fresh wounds burning in the salty water before it lifted him back upward, away from the safety of the bottom.  The thought made no sense, but it seemed that the harder he tried to right himself, the further he sank, until he was fully disoriented in a darkness where gravity could not help. 

The acceptance of drowning was surprisingly quick.  He seemed to know that it would not hurt, at least not for long, and felt little more than a swell of curiosity toward the notion.  It was only as he parted his lips to draw a fatal breath that long fingers wrapped around his wrist and pulled hard.  He opened his eyes, despite the sting, and saw the sun shining brightly down onto the surface of the water, a beacon for those daring enough to seek it.

His limbs worked without his direction, driven by the will to survive, and Link found himself clinging to Rhett, arms around his neck, legs wrapped around his waist as he gasped.  Newly exhausted, he rested his head on Rhett's shoulder, thinking nothing of the intimacy of their embrace.  It was done purely of necessity.  Rhett's left arm held him in place, spanning the width of his back, while with his right, he navigated their joined bodies toward the shore. 

The water level lowered as Rhett moved, dropping below his thighs and leaving him to carry Link without the aid of its buoyancy.  He did so easily, moving just beyond the reach of the waves before lowering him carefully to the sand.  Link's arms took their time extricating themselves as the separation of their chests left him cold and weak. 

Rhett's face blocked the direct sunlight, a halo of bright light shimmering from his wet hair.  Link struggled to look directly at him. 

"What's happening to me..." he croaked, slinging his arm over his eyes and as he caught his breath.  Rhett chuckled and lay on the sand beside him, keeping the lengths of their arms connected.

"What do you want to get for lunch?" he asked.  Link could hear him scratching his beard and turned to face him, eyes wide at his nonchalance.

"Are you serious?  You're talking about lunch?  You just _carried_ me in.  I just...I almost drowned."  Even as he spoke, Link could sense that the argument was moot.

"Hmm.  Did you see your life flash before your eyes?"

"It happens in other ways," Link shot back, feeling surer of this than anything.

"Oh, does it?"

Link did not know how to respond.  He exhaled in disbelief, unable to comprehend what nearly felt like callousness on Rhett's part.  It was not malicious.  It was worse: dismissive.

He draped his arm over his eyes again and gritted his teeth against the headache that threatened his temples.  The darkness of closed eyes reminded him of the scrapes he'd endured, reviving a dizziness that only intensified when he lifted his head and found his knees completely unmarred.  They did not even hurt.

"Rhett."  He flinched as his voice cracked, but Rhett did not seem to notice.

"Link."

"Am I dreaming right now?"

"Who am I to say?" 

Link sat up and ran his tongue along the edges of his teeth, as if confirming their presence.  As the sun slipped behind another unexpected cloud, he smirked and shook his head. 

"I am.  Holy crap.  I'm lucid dreaming.  Earlier this morning...I _dreamt_ about dreaming.  I meta-dreamed!  Ha!"

"Or you're still sleeping in the car, on the way to the beach."

Link frowned, considering the possibility.  He couldn't focus on the thought long enough to care.  "Either way, you're going to be so jealous when..."

"When you tell me?" Rhett asked, eyebrow arched above a closed eye. 

"Well, not _you_."

"Alright, so you're lucid dreaming.  What are you going to do with it?"

Link pushed himself to standing, brushing the sand from the backs of his arms. 

"I don't know.  I guess I can do anything, huh?"

"Guess so."

He surveyed the beach, hoping for inspiration, and sighed.  "I don't know what I want."

Rhett sat up, then rose to his feet, cracking his neck and rolling his shoulders.  "I want to fly."

Link frowned.  "It's my dream."

"So _you_ let me fly," he said, gently poking a finger into Link's chest.  The contact was brief, but felt like a spark, igniting a frenzy of unnamable emotions that died as quickly as they were born.  This, Link could tell, was out of his control.  He said nothing of it, and chose to walk back toward the car. 

"You're just going to leave our stuff?" Rhett asked of his back.  He turned, brow furrowed as he cocked his head.

"I'm not spending my dream picking up after myself.  Come on, man."

Rhett shook his head and abandoned their chairs to the beach, following Link to the car.  By the time he caught up, Link had taken his place at the wheel.  As the radio blared through four open windows, Link bared his teeth in a self-satisfied smile.

"You choose to drive?" Rhett asked, sliding into the passenger seat and cranking it backward as far as possible.

"I like to drive.  Coastal highway, brother.  No traffic to get in my way.  What's not to love?"

Rhett nodded and rested his arm on the edge of the door, hand hanging out the open window.  It stayed there, cutting through the wind as Link drove them through a quiet city toward the open highway.  The radio never broke for commercials; every song was a current favorite, whether thoughtfully chosen or pulled from deep within his subconscious as a pleasant surprise.  Rhett knew some lyrics and made up others.  They sang and whistled and rapped over the wind whipping through their hair as bluffs and beaches and palms sped by.  With his foot on the gas and the wheel firmly in his grip, Link relished his newfound sense of control, thrilled with his ability to safely speed down the highway, sun pouring across their skin from a sky that dared not cloud over any longer.


	2. Power

Link did not know how long he'd been driving.  He could not remember heading east, or even whether or what they had eaten, but none of that mattered.  The mundane had slid by unlived, pushed away in favor of savoring the sun, the air, and the music of his drive.  But eventually, the sun was setting in the rearview mirror, and he found himself pulling the key from the ignition while parked in Rhett's driveway.  It was Rhett's car, after all.

"You want to come in, or you tryin' to get rid of me?" Rhett asked, hand reaching for the door's handle.  It paused, suspended as Link thought.  His decision seemed to take some time.

"I'll come in."

He heard the front door close behind him without memory of walking through it.  Growing used to the little jumps, the missing time amused him. He was hardly fazed when he found a tumbler in his hand as he leaned against the white kitchen counter. 

It was no surprise that his subconscious should bring him here: whenever he visited this home in waking hours, he always ended up in the kitchen.  Somehow, it called to him, welcomed him warmly with its neutral colors and recessed lighting.  This was where the coffee lived, and there always seemed to be a fresh pot brewing. 

Rhett leaned against the small island, positioned diagonally from Link, who quickly pushed himself up onto the countertop, eyeing Rhett as he did so.  He could sense that the act was a forbidden one, and anticipated reproach. 

"What?" Rhett asked, eyes twinkling with amusement.  Link shrugged.

"You're letting me sit on your counter."

Rhett narrowed his eyes and grinned, shaking his head as he raised his own glass to his lips.  "I've never tried to stop you."

The words rang true, but made Link wonder who it was that had scolded him before.  He knew there had been a playfulness to the voice, but couldn't remember its sound.  Before he lost himself in wondering, he looked to Rhett, anchoring himself in the eyes that were staring back.

"Anywhere in the world, and you came here.  You're not very imaginative."

"I'm a creature of habit," Link replied.  "I guess I want to be here."

"What else do you want?"

He didn't have to search for it; the answer burst from him, swelling from his chest into his throat and out his mouth before he could even rehearse it.

"Come here."  His own voice sounded unpredictable and far away.

Rhett tilted his head and pushed himself forward, moving slowly, nudging Link's knees apart to stand between them, hands coming to rest on either side of his hips.

The closeness was new but not uncomfortable.  Link inspected the details of Rhett's face, following the clean line of his nose to the sharp angle of his brow.  His hand raised, fingers stretching toward the cheekbone in front of him.  When they connected, they tingled.  Rhett smiled, eyes downcast under the touch. 

"What are you doing?" His voice was soft, teasing Link for both his boldness and timidity.  He leaned into the touch, forcing the hand to cup his cheek, his own lifting to cover it.

"Just dreaming," Link answered quietly, emphasizing the harmlessness of his actions.  He thought he saw an expression of concern flash across Rhett's brow, and pulled his hand away quickly, eyes widening as his stomach churned.  "What's wrong?" He answered his own question before Rhett could speak.  " _This_ is wrong.  Holy shit.  Sorry.  I'm sorry," he repeated, gently pushing Rhett back so that he could slide off the counter and put a comfortable distance between them again.

"Link..."

He could feel his heart pumping violently, spreading anxiety and adrenaline through his veins with every beat.  His legs could not carry him fast enough to the front door.  His fingers closed around the knob and twisted, sliding across the brass with a painful futility.  He tried twice more, gritting his teeth as the metal held fast.  Fingers turned to claws, scratching for purchase on a lock that was not there. 

"What the...son of a bitch..." he grunted, face burning with a sickening blend of panic and embarrassment.  "Son of a bitch!"

"Link," Rhett called with more force.  "Just stop.  Calm down."

"This is supposed to be _my_ dream," he cried, the words dying against the heavy wood of the door.  His shoulders dropped as he took a deep breath and turned back to face Rhett.

"Why can't I leave?  What's going on..." He could only whisper over the growing lump in his throat.  Rhett watched him silently as his back hit the door and he slid downward into a seated ball, legs pulling tight to his chest, arms wrapping around his shins protectively.  His buried his face in his knees for what felt like hours before Rhett plopped down beside him and leaned into him from shoulder to hip. 

"Don't cry."

"I'm not crying," Link answered tiredly, wincing at the waver in his voice.  He sighed, raising his head and rolling his eyes.  "But you're not helping.  I don't want to do this anymore.  I just want to wake up—" His words abandoned him as a heavy head rested on his shoulder.  He could not help but inhale the familiar faint scent of Rhett's pomade. 

"Maybe..." Rhett began, exhaling heavily at whatever thought was trapped on his tongue.  Link shrugged the shoulder he laid upon, jostling him into finishing his sentence.  "Maybe you aren't dreaming."

Link snorted.  "Don't know how that's supposed to make me feel any better, but okay.  Sure."

Rhett raised his head and looked down into his face, expression sympathetic.  "Maybe."

Link squared his jaw at the suggestion, inhaling deeply before responding.  "Right.  What day is it, Rhett?"

Rhett hummed a sigh, beaten.  And Link knew that whatever it was that kept him from answering was also keeping himself from finding reality again.  Still, there was comfort in his gaze, so Link held it, seeking whatever respite he could from his growing confusion. 

"Did you think you were controlling me?" Rhett finally asked.  His tone was quiet but lacking judgment.  The question was born of innocent curiosity, so Link felt no hesitation in answering.

"I mean, I thought that's what the whole lucid dreaming thing was about.  I know I'm here, so I can manipulate whatever I see, right?"

"That's why you tried to run?"

"I felt bad.  You had this look..." His cheeks began to burn again.

"Surprise, maybe.  I don't remember.  But I do know this: you weren't manipulating me.  Don't give yourself so much credit."  He laughed at the idea and playfully shoved Link with his shoulder.  His eyes growing heavier by the second, Link let the force take him all the way to the floor, causing Rhett to laugh even harder.  "Controlling me.  That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."

"I don't know, man.  I'm lost," Link confessed, taking his glasses off and chuckling at the realization that he could see perfectly without them.  Leaning into his madness, he tossed them backward over his head, reveling in their soft clatter into the darkened room beyond.  "I'm out of my mind.  I'm tired.  I'm going to sleep.  And I'm going to say a little prayer that when I wake up, I don't feel like a crazy person."

"You're going to sleep on the floor?" Rhett asked, already moving to stand. 

"What does it matter?  Who cares?  I'm going to wake up in my bed.  This isn't real.  This isn't your house, that damn door isn't your damn door.  This isn't your floor.  _You're_ not even real."

"Okay, so we're just going to say hurtful things, then."  Rhett held his hand to his chest in mock indignation.  It dropped as the corner of his mouth curled upward.  "You could come fake sleep in my fake bed.  It would be a little more fake comfortable."

Link raised his head.  "Excuse me?"

Dropping the mischievous expression, Rhett shrugged.  "What do I need it for?  I'll probably just disappear when you close your eyes."

He wanted to laugh, but Link was suddenly fighting a potent cloud of exhaustion.  He considered the probability that falling asleep in his own bed had the best chance of his waking up where he belonged, but his brain was too tired and too foggy to get him there.  Instead, he opted for the closest thing to it, and raised his hand straight up into the air.  When Rhett grasped it firmly, he pulled himself up.

 

Beyond removing his shoes, Link didn't bother undressing; he just pulled back the covers of the California king and slid into its cool sheets.  The center of the bed beckoned him, but he chose to lie on the left side, leaving the right smooth and untouched.  It was a force of habit that he did not have the energy to try to understand.

Real or otherwise, the bed was undeniably comfortable.  It conformed to the shape of his body, dipping with his hip and shoulder, rising to meet the narrowest point of his waist.  Even the pillow supported him perfectly, and he did not fail to notice its faint smell of tea tree shampoo.

Rhett watched him from the doorway, leaning his shoulder and head against the jamb.  Link had said nothing, moving instinctively through the house, finding the dark bedroom easily, leaving Rhett to follow behind, if he so chose.  And he did choose. 

"Have I been dismissed?" he asked just as Link closed his eyes.  The reply was a wordless groan and a wave of a limp hand. 

For fear of interrupting his escape, Link did not open his eyes to look at Rhett.  He decided to let him figure out his own plan for the night, whatever it was to entail.  He could only hope that it would be both fast and restful, planting him mercifully back into a world he could understand.

His body had other plans.  His legs twitched, his nose itched, and his fingers kept curling and straightening without his consent.  Eventually, he stilled for what seemed a long while before his head involuntarily jerked.  The gesture convinced him that he'd actually fallen asleep. 

Two slow minutes passed as he debated whether to open his eyes and mentally braced himself to see his own empty bedroom.  He inhaled deeply and raised his head, taking in the room.  Just as quickly, his head dropped melodramatically back onto the pillow, all the air escaping him in a heavy sigh.

"Sorry," Rhett said from the doorway.  He crossed the room and plopped down at the foot of the bed.  "You just need to relax.  If it's supposed to happen, it will happen."

"'If it's suppose to happen.'  What the hell?  I'm _supposed_ to wake up.  I'm not _supposed_ to be trapped in a dream.  Let alone such a boring one.  I'm dreaming about being tired.  What does that tell you?"

"Well, if it's your dream, you're the one making it boring."

"This is quickly becoming a nightmare."  The dark room lit up in two quick flashes.  Outside, a rumble of thunder rolled through the black sky.  "See?"

"Why don't you just imagine something relaxing, then?  Stop freaking yourself out.  You put so much pressure on yourself.  If you wake up, it will just be a new day with new shit to get done, anyway."

" _When_ , Rhett.  Not _if_."

"Right.  But I mean," he groaned as he lay across the foot of the bed on his back, head tilted toward Link as his hands cradled it, "can't blame me for wanting you to stick around.  What happens if you wake up?  Where do _I_ go?  You're mad 'cause you're tired; I'm staring down an existential crisis."

Link frowned at him, trying not to be bothered by the inner workings of an illusion. 

"But that's fine.  You want to go back to your boring life."

"My life isn't boring.  You should know that.  You're in it," Link argued.  Rhett thought for a moment, then his brow arched.  He rolled to his side and propped his head on his hand.

"Maybe sleep isn't the way out.  Maybe you need something to jolt you out of this.  Something to prove to yourself that it _is_ just a dream."  The windows rattled with thunder, and Rhett laughed.  "I think you agree.  And I think you were on the right track earlier."

Link felt his pulse quicken.  His mouth went dry as Rhett pushed himself to his knees, eyes dark and predatory.  When he started to crawl up the body in his bed, his expression turned devious, as if he knew something Link didn't.  It was a familiar look, one that tended to frustrate Link and excite him at the same time.

Hovering inches from Link's face, Rhett smiled, amused with an idea that Link was grateful he claimed for his own. 

 

 

 

This time, it was his own gasp that woke him.  His jaw burned from clenching his teeth, and as he rolled onto his side, his body felt stiff from its lack of movement.  Link welcomed the subtle aches sparking throughout his body as evidence that he had, in fact, woken from a long and vivid sleep.  His brain had worked so hard that his body could not keep up, so it had frozen completely, locking him into place in the middle of his bed. 

He lay on his side, drifting in and out of the waking world, occasionally working his jaw when it throbbed, listening to a soft rain thrumming the glass of his window.  It did not rain often, and he vowed to enjoy it for as long as he could.  He'd expected longer than the ten minutes his alarm gave him.

Swinging a hand onto the nightstand in front of him, he grabbed his phone and dismissed the melodic chimes with a blind swipe across its screen.  Just as he moved to set it back down, he caught a notification of three missed calls and a voicemail from Rhett.  He tapped the notification to check the times of the calls, figuring they must have come through in the middle of the night, when his phone was set to 'Do Not Disturb.'  Instead of opening the call log, though, the phone dialed his voicemail, and he shook his head at his lack of control over his fingers.  He dropped his head to the pillow and put the phone on speaker to listen the message.  It began with a piercing static before Rhett's quiet voice sounded in the background.  Link strained to make out his words. 

"Hey, man.  I don't know if you can even hear me right now.  But, it's worth a shot, right?" he asked, laughing quietly.  Before the message could continue, the phone's screen went white, the device seizing its functions and failing to respond to any combination of Link's frustrated taps or resets.  He growled, lacking the patience to fumble with the machine before his ritualistic coffee, and tossed it back to the nightstand.  It clambered into a picture frame, knocking it over noisily and drawing a heavy sigh from his chest.

"Good.  It's _that_ day.  Of course it is." 

Hurling himself from the warmth of his bed, he stretched his arms over his head and enjoyed the series of pops and cracks that sounded from his joints.  He turned and made the bed quickly, eyes lingering for a long moment on the pillow at the opposite edge until he blinked himself out of his sleepy thoughtlessness and reached for the picture frame that had toppled over.  He set it upright and shook his head with a grin.  It was familiarly empty, void of a picture he knew he'd been meaning to place in it.  He tried to recall the image as he yawned, but his brain was too sluggish to conjure it. 

The kitchen smelled of coffee when he arrived, and he celebrated having remembered to turn on coffeemaker's timer the night before.  It was only once he'd poured his cup that he realized he hadn't looked closely into his living room upon passing it.  Mug in hand, he stepped back toward the open room and sighed, rolling his eyes at himself upon finding it unoccupied.  Of course Rhett wasn't there. 

But Rhett was somewhere.  He'd tried to call with spotty reception. 

Link tried to remember if he'd recently said he was going out of town, but nothing came to mind.  He abandoned the thought and shuffled to the couch, picking up the laptop he knew he'd left on the coffee table.  He had been playing around with Garage Band, making a cacophonous mess of drum kits that cracked him up.  Wanting to send his latest creation to Rhett—a bi-weekly tradition they'd recently initiated—he unfolded the computer and waited for it to hum to life. 

It did not.

He pressed the power button and frowned.  Three times he tried to start it.  Three times the screen remained black and unresponsive.  His head shook in disbelief, trying to remember a particularly violent spell in the storm that had moved in overnight.  He sighed, dreading telling Rhett about the loss of his computer and sitting through yet another discussion of surge protectors. 

Setting the laptop back on the table, he picked up the remote and ignored the tension settling into his stomach.  He aimed his hand at the television and held his breath as he pressed the power button.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me."

As lifeless as the laptop, the television showed nothing but his own hazy reflection.  He laughed dryly, tossing the remote back onto the table, the sound of its rough contact echoing through the room.  His hands drug down across his face, and he rubbed his eyes.  He uncovered them to find a ray of sunshine beaming through his front window.

"Good.  Good for you, weather, gettin' your shit together _just_ after you wreck mine.  Nice."

Talking to the weather seemed the beginning of a dangerous spiral, so he silenced himself with a long drink of coffee, finishing the cup and carrying it back to the kitchen.  His fingers brushed the top of the coffeemaker as he shook his head.

"My only friend."  He couldn't help it; talking to the inanimate seemed comforting somehow.  Perhaps he just wanted to hear a voice. 

From the kitchen, he felt less frozen in his isolation and more able to craft a schedule for his day.  The most pressing loss was of his phone, so he planned to take it in first.  From there, he would find the nearest Mac store and continue his journey of technological rebirth. 

In a further attempt to energize himself for a suddenly tedious and expensive day, he stepped into the shower, hoping to rinse away the heavy remains of his sleep. 

He let the warm water loosen his shoulders and lighten his growing headache before soaping a washcloth and dragging it down his body.  Upon reaching his legs, he flinched, gasping at an unexpected sting on his knee.  A wide scrape had long scabbed over, but in his state of distraction, he'd scratched it open.  A thin river of watery blood trailed down his shin, dropping to the shower floor and spiraling into the drain.  Watching it too closely disoriented him, leaving him dizzy when he finally raised his head again.

Drying and dressing had refocused him, and he moved with purpose as he packed his computer into a leather messenger bag, grinning at his own thoughtfulness as he grabbed its power cord as well.  Slinging the bag on his shoulder, he returned to the bedroom for his phone and found it where he left it, lying dead on the nightstand.  As he shoved it into a tight pocket, his eyes lingered again on the empty picture frame, the mind behind them trying to answer an unformed question.  He ignored it and crossed the length of his house in a hurry, stepping down into the garage and whipping open the back door of his new SUV.  The empty backseat struck him with a similar unease, inspiring a thin sense of nostalgia that he had to work to shake off and chalk up to the unfortunate day he was having.

Slapping the garage door opener, he inhaled deeply, watching the barrier between his destructive home and the outside world lift away.  But his path was blocked, a familiar black crossover parked in his driveway.  A large hand waved emphatically from above its steering wheel.


	3. The World

 "Are we kidding with this weather right now?" Rhett asked, pulling off his sunglasses as he loped up the driveway.  "When was the last time it rained like that?  And now it's sunny."

Link's brow furrowed and he shot a glance at the computer bag in his backseat.  "Tell me about it.  Feels like my house got struck by lightning.  I had..."  His voice trailed into a frustrated groan as he dismissed the sentence.  Rhett's eyes widened.

"What'd you lose?"

"Name it."

Rhett's arms flew up over his head, covering his eyes.  "Your computer?  Your TV?"

"My phone, too.  I had just started listening to your static-ass message.  Where were you calling from?"

Rhett's arms fell as his head tilted, eyes narrowing in confusion.  As another thought hit him, they blew wide again.

"Not Mr. Coffee!  Tell me they didn't take Mr. Coffee!"

"Sole survivor," Link responded, easily allowing his question to go unanswered.

"Oh, thank god," Rhett sighed, heading for the door. 

"Hey, whoa.  I'm on my way out.  I've got to get all my stuff fixed."

Rhett's hand was already on the knob when he turned back to face Link, eyebrow arched.  "Right now?  That has to happen at this moment?"

Link heard himself laugh at the suggestion that he would abandon his plans to entertain an unexpected guest.  But he also found himself following Rhett back into the house.

"What's there to do in a technologically empty home?" Link asked Rhett's back. "I feel abandoned by the digital age."

"And I can't even help," Rhett chuckled.  "I forgot my phone at home!  What are the odds?  Still, it's kind of a nice idea, right?  You get to be an island for a minute.  Don't have those little pings vying for your attention," he answered, batting away imaginary nuisances as he made his way to the kitchen, Link close on his heels.

"Except that my life is in the pings."

"Shame on you.  Mother Nature hands you the gift of solitude and you dart out to plug yourself back in."

"Oh, I get it.  You've forgotten what we do for a living."

"We write and talk and film.  What will we have to talk about if we don't look up at the world every once in a while?" Rhett asked, ducking to look into Link's refrigerator.

"Mother Nature gives me the gift of solitude.  But then you show up."

"To stop you from ruining it, obviously.  Also, you invited me."  It didn't sound familiar, but it did sound true.  "The other day.  We were talking about exactly this phenomenon.  'You should come over,' you said, 'and we should just hang out like we used to.  Play cards or watch a bad movie.'"  He pulled a pitcher of tea from the fridge and turned to face Link, free hand extending in a _viola_.  "Is your stereo fried, too?" he asked, not waiting for an answer before setting the pitcher on the counter and disappearing into the living room.  Within seconds, the house filled with an old, familiar song.  A melody of whistles ricocheted off the walls until they fell over Link's resistant frame.  Rhett reappeared in the kitchen, nodding along to the catchy beat.

"Good news.  It works," he announced, lifting the pitcher in a silent toast before pouring himself a glass, feet shuffling in a swaying dance as he moved about the room.  His grinning face was magnetic, and Link found himself relaxing in its presence, letting the stressors of his awful morning slide away.

"Alabama, Arkansas, I do love my ma and pa.  Not the way I do love you," Rhett sang, voice comically high and affected with a colorful twang that caused Link to smile.  He picked up the alternate part of the duet with a surprising ease, singing words he hadn't realized he'd known.

"Holy moly, me oh my.  You're the apple of my eye.  Girl, I've never loved no one like you."  Their laughter loosened his tongue, inspiring him to take advantage of Rhett's good mood and desire to talk.  In his own home, he felt momentarily safe to explore his subconscious.

"Alright," Link began, leaning heavily against his own wall oven.  "I had a crazy dream last night." 

"Probably all the electricity in the air," Rhett said, leaving his analysis at that.  Link exhaled a breath he'd unknowingly held, relieved to hear a different response to a familiar statement.

"Yeah.  Probably.  It was really strange, though.  Vivid," he explained, shaking his head as he stared unseeingly at the fridge.

"You seem...strangely affected by it," Rhett noted, the words creeping out slowly.  "You're not about to tell me something uncomfortable, are you?"  His eyes twinkled in anticipation, letting Link see through the facade of not wanting to hear every twisted detail he might have to offer.

Link laughed.

"I might be.  Don't pretend it's never happened to you, man.  We spend way too much time together.  We just don't talk about it.  'Cause it's _strange_."

"But also hilarious," Rhett added, laughing at his interpretation of Link's response.  He set his glass on the counter and started prowling across the kitchen, narrowing his eyes dramatically.

"Was I good?  Not that I need any confirmation.  Don't get weird, just tell me if I was good.  I should have been."

Link threw his head back and stared at the ceiling lights.  "Ha!  'Don't get weird.'  Too late, friend."

"You're right.  It _has_ happened to me.  A few years ago.  I had a hard time shaking it, deciding if I should say anything or not.  Obviously, I was more merciful than you are.  But I was good in that one, for sure."

"What a selfish memory."

Rhett laughed again, and Link straightened his posture when he drew closer.  The boundary was obvious, a line drawn firmly, never crossed and rarely discussed, though Link couldn't quite remember why, other than the persistent sensation of _that's just how things are_.  But in this moment, with the lighthearted song drifting through the air and Rhett's prowess (comical or otherwise), Link was stricken by two pressing thoughts.  He knew that first, there was no such thing as objective attractiveness, but second, if there was, Rhett McLaughlin possessed it.  And it crossed no lines to think as much.

His face must have given him away, and Rhett saw the chance to catch him off guard.  He took it, as he tended to do, and approached him, moving in sync with the beat from the living room, hiding his intent beneath his musical performance.  As he closed in, Link spoke, interrupting his act.

"This will really make it weird: nothing happened.  It wasn't that kind of dream.  Now don't you feel stupid for confessing yours?"

Rhett froze, mouth turned down into a thoughtful frown.  "No.  I choose not to feel stupid."

"Oh, good.  I was in your house, though.  And I think I knew I was asleep, but I couldn't wake up.  So you told me to try to sleep in your bed, in hopes that it would wake me up."

"And it worked?"

"Not really.  I woke up, but not from falling asleep."

"Well, what woke you?"

"You did.  You..." His cheeks reddened with the coming admission, but something inspired him to push through the potential embarrassment.  Somehow, it seemed worth it.  "You climbed on top of me."

"In my bed?  Link, I think we _were_ talking about the same weird thing."

"No, that's where it ended."

"Oh," Rhett replied, nodding and picking up his dance in the middle of the kitchen floor.  "What a tease."

"I was in control for a long time, though.  I knew where I was, and I was doing what I wanted.  I was lucid dreaming, man!"

"Until you weren't."

"Well, still."

"Shh, this is my favorite part," Rhett announced, holding his hand up to listen to the song's spoken interlude.

_Jade?_

_Alexander..._

_Do you remember when you fell out of my window?_

_I sure do. You came jumping out after me._

Link shook his head, not listening to the rest of conversation, but instead trying to remember why the names sounded familiar.  He'd gone to high school with an Alexander, he thought.  But his focus couldn't withstand the sight of Rhett swaying around his kitchen with eyes softly closed and a smile on his face. 

It was a stance both vulnerable and inviting, long arms bent open around an invisible body as he slow danced around the butcher's block, mouthing half of a conversation about falling in love.  In the midst of a morning in which everything had gone wrong, Link felt drawn to the obvious warmth of the tall frame moving about his kitchen.  He longed for the comfort and security that those arms were silently offering, craved the chance to be grounded in the reality that was this Rhett, this playful, vibrant Rhett.  The night's exhausting dreams had primed him for this, unsettling him in just such a way that only this friend could right.

And so he inhaled deeply and stepped forward, placing his left hand in Rhett's right and smiling up at the eyes that shot open in surprise.  They laughed at each other as they danced around the room together, singing wildly, "Home, yes I am home! Home is wherever I'm with you!"

 

 

 

"Man, it's not even noon and I could take a nap.  If I could get a job that paid me to sleep..."

"Yeah," Rhett replied, nodding as he dropped on the far end of Link's sofa.  "I think I got up too early.  Power nap?"

"I really need to get my stuff fixed today," Link protested, resisting the urge to sink into the chaise end of his sectional.  Rhett nodded, raising his hands in supplication.

"Power nap, then I'll take you out to lunch and you can go get everything fixed."

"Oh, take me to lunch, huh?   What's the occasion?"

"You'll be too poor to afford it by the end of the day."

They laughed sadly, and Link shook his head in acceptance.  "Fine.  One hour, tops."

The choice to share the couch had gone without saying; Link didn't have the heart to steal away to his own bed.  Rhett kicked off his shoes and stretched across the long side of the couch as Link lay with his head near Rhett's feet, his own legs draping across the footrest of the chaise.  The room had only gone still for a few minutes before Link felt a foot fall against his head.  He cringed away, raising just his head to shoot daggers at Rhett, but found him actually sleeping. 

It was an impressive piece of furniture, seating up to six people if used to its capacity, but somehow, even just two could make the sofa feel crowded.  While Rhett dozed, Link struggled to find a comfortable position, mainly for lack of leg room and the awkward angle his knees were forced to endure.  He shifted, turned, and adjusted until Rhett admonished him with a sleepy groan.  The taller man burrowed his left side into the plush backrest and tapped the expanse of cushion left open on his right, never bothering to open his eyes, and therefore never seeing Link's skeptical expression.

"Come on.  Nobody's got to know," Rhett said quietly, dismissing the tension that tried to accompany his request.  For the briefest of moments, Link sensed that something in the gesture was not right.  It seemed natural and harmless and at the same time impossible.  But the moment passed, leaving an inviting space at Rhett's side in its wake.

Link sighed in surrender and pushed himself up, briefly looking at what was undoubtedly the most comfortable place in the room.  His tired eyes begged him to move to it, so he did, quickly sliding off his own end, crossing to the other, and placing his hip next to Rhett's.  He lay back tentatively, trying to position his head comfortably on the cushion, but their shoulders did not allow for it.  Instead, Rhett silently stretched his right arm out, flattening his shoulder.  Link laid his head on it, allowing his cheek to press into the side of Rhett's chest, as Rhett's pressed into the back of the couch.  The long arm wrapped lightly around his shoulders, and Link shivered at the subtle graze of fingertips across the back of his arm.

He found the position warm, comfortable, and surprisingly familiar.  His muscles knew the arrangement, this balancing act between the sofa's edge and a close body.  It calmed him, pushing away his hesitance with a silent promise that the contact was allowed, that this was not the first time.  With no shortage of angular bones between them, there was a distinct hardness to the half embrace, but even this was relaxing because, despite the flicker of uncertainty that preceded it, it felt entirely real.  And as his brain tried to short circuit over just how well they fit together, Link knew he should savor what was real. 

This is likely why he pretended to ignore the soft kiss that was planted in his hair before he slipped away into a light sleep.

 

 

He woke in the same place, mostly.  He'd managed to turn in his sleep, pressing his chest fully into Rhett's side, his arm draping loosely over the stomach in front of him.  The smell of a subtle woodsy soap was first to register, drawing him slowly, languidly back into consciousness.  Rhett's chosen music still played, though at a lower, more soothing volume.  It took a bit longer for his sense of touch to return, but when it did, he did not flinch away.  Sight came last, as he opened his eyes timidly.

The chest before him raised and lowered in a peaceful telltale rhythm, and he decided in watching it that he was not ready to wake Rhett.  Instead, he watched his own right hand rest limply at the far side of Rhett's stomach.  Moved by an unrecognizable force, he shifted it an inch to the left, then grazed the shirt with his fingertips, testing the fabric for the warmth he had left behind.  It soothed him, somehow, confirming his ability to transfer heat.  It made him feel alive and connected.  And the longer he stared at his hand on the dark fabric of Rhett's shirt, the more it intoxicated him, until he found himself tracing faint figure eights with the edge of his index finger. 

Not far from his hand, Rhett's shirt had ridden upward, exposing an inch of his stomach that suddenly tempted Link's fingers.  They danced lightly down, sliding the fabric upward slightly, revealing just enough skin to brush his pattern into. 

Link continued his tracing until the back of his own shirt lifted and warm fingertips began returning the favor on his lower back.  He did not lift his head, but instead let the soft touch ease away what remained of his rough morning while pressing the side of his face into Rhett's chest.  His thumb soon began rubbing lazily back and forth over Rhett's skin in appreciation.

These were not gestures traded between friends.

They felt right all the same.

Fingertips turned to a flat palm; a graze became a press, encouragement for Link to curl his hips forward, directly into Rhett's thigh.  He did so, keeping his head down and sighing at the touch.  Warm breath brushed down the back of his neck, and he bit his lip. 

"What are you doing?" asked a low voice, gruff with sleep.

The question sent a thrill of anxiety through Link.  He sensed that he was at a crossroads he'd visited before, and could only close his eyes and lean on instinct to answer for him.

"I could ask the same of you," he whispered in reply.  A soft groan vibrated the chest beneath his cheek as the palm at his back pressed him again.

"Who even knows anymore?" Rhett sighed, snuffing out the lingering wisps of doubt from Link's fingers, which stretched over the curve of Rhett's ribs.

"You kissed me."

"So?"

It took a single syllable to push Link from his body, and he watched himself lie against Rhett in both perfect understanding and utter disbelief.

"So nothing, I guess," he heard himself say. 

"So nothing.  You want me to do it again?"

"I might," his mouth answered as a fraction of his mind curled in on itself, whispering _we can't, we won't, we shouldn't._   A slightly louder voice asked, _why not?_

Rhett sighed. "I need more than 'might' to move me out of this position.  I'm far too comfortable for a maybe."

Link laughed.  "Your heart's not in it.  It's been such a destructive day already.  Let's not do anything—"  He was interrupted by Rhett's hand reaching for his bent knee and pulling it toward the back of the couch, manhandling Link into half-straddling his thighs.  Strong hands gripped his shoulders, rotating and pushing until he sat up, looking down at a mischievous grin and an arched brow.

Link cocked his head.  "This looks compromising."

"Who's looking?"

Conceding the point, Link let his hands rest on Rhett's chest, enjoying the warmth radiating up through all the points of contact.  He closed his eyes and listened as a new guitar melody drifted softly from the speakers below his lifeless television.

"Do I know this song?" he asked, head tilting back as brave fingers trailed up the length of his outer thigh, encircling his hips.

"I don't know what you know.  But I bet I know what you want."

Link opened his eyes and arched his own brow in an unspoken, _really?_

"Come here."  The request was quiet, rumbling from deep in Rhett's throat and carrying all kinds of suggestion with it.  Link blushed at the flare of excitement that shot through him and sank forward, daring to come nose-to-nose with Rhett as he half-listened to the song in the air: _They thought they were meant for each other, only thinking of one another..._

"You don't have the nerve," Link teased. 

"I don't need it.  You'll give."  Rhett rolled his hips upward, pushing a thick sigh from Link and grinning as it poured across his jaw. 

He didn't care that he was proving Rhett right; Link just wanted to wipe the smirk from his face.  He pressed forward, bringing their lips together in an awkward, motionless touch.  They froze completely, each seemingly deciding between sighs of relief and fits of laughter.  Hysteria won out, and Rhett broke first, snorting into Link's cheek, causing him to turn away and surrender to his own laugh. 

"That was so bad," Rhett choked out, his laughter vibrating up through Link's body.  "You just sat there!"

"So did you!"

"Oh my god," Rhett cried, grabbing Link's shoulders and forcing eye contact, his face suddenly serious.  "Is this your first kiss?  Were you lying about Amber? ....and everyone after?" Before Link could respond, he cracked up at his own joke.

"Please," Link scoffed, rolling his eyes.  There was no follow up, so he shook his head and said it again.

Wiping a tear from the corner of his eye, Rhett shook his head.  "That was great.  Master of the uncomfortable."  He sighed, then added, "You want to try that again?"

He did; he wanted nothing more.  He said as much by leaning in again and easily slotting their mouths together, wasting no time in pulling Rhett's lower lip into his mouth, tasting it with the tip of his tongue.  Rhett's eyebrows flashed upward in surprise before he craned his neck, adding his own pressure to the newly intense experience.  His hands slid upward, momentarily stopping and squeezing at Link's waist before finding their way to his neck, fingers splaying over the angles of his jaw. 

Link fought a smile at the sound of a soft whimper being swallowed down, privately gloating over his newfound ability to melt the man beneath him.  He nipped at Rhett's freshly swollen lip and pulled away, consciously slowing his breath, hiding a desire to gasp for air.

Rhett's eyes opened slowly as he emerged from a daze.  He smiled crookedly up at Link. 

"Point taken.  I'm left with but one question."

Link narrowed his eyes, dropping his weight back on his heels, narrowly avoiding sitting on Rhett's pelvis.

"What took us so long?"

Somewhere, deep down in Link's chest, tucked beneath over fifteen years of memories with Rhett, there was an answer.  He could feel it, tugging at him, pleading for his attention with a voice too small to make out.  Searching for it seemed like work, so he opted for the path of least resistance, dropping again to bury his nose in the crook of Rhett's neck and properly breathe him in. 

"I don't know.  Doesn't matter."

"Whatever you say," Rhett hummed, planting a kiss on Link's forehead.  "Do you want to go get reconnected?"

"Not really," Link spoke into his neck.  "Not right now."  He shifted back toward Rhett's side, sinking into a more intimate embrace than before.  He reached for Rhett's chin and turned it toward his own, bringing their lips together in a slow and lazy kiss.

Link hummed with satisfaction as a fog of contentment rolled through him.  He let his fingers drag along the side of Rhett's neck, reaching to rake through the hair behind his ear, lifting it with his nails and petting it back down with his thumb while he reconsidered the boundary built through years of jokes and sideways glances. It had proven shockingly thin despite all the effort they had put into clarifying that they were nothing more than friends.  But as the lie fell away, Link felt like he could exhale for the first time in decades.  And what he breathed in was pure and warm and safe.  He'd made a home in Rhett, and he could finally relax into it.

They held each other quietly, each reveling in just how easily they had crossed such a threshold, listening to the song draw to a close.   The final notes came as a haunting whistle, beautiful and dark.  They reached Link's ear and began to dig, distracting him out of his haze.

"Rhett..."

"Hmm?"

"You said your phone is at home..."

"Yep.  We're as alone as we can be," he answered, pulling Link tighter to him and letting his hand slide down his back, stopping just below the waistline of his jeans.

A chill ran through Link, and he swallowed hard, trying to suppress the question that, after a long and heavy moment of silence, fought its way out of his throat.

"What...what's the stereo plugged into?  Where'd the music come from?"

"Shh," Rhett replied, lifting his hand to stroke Link's hair in a thinly veiled attempt at placation.

"Rhett."  The name slipped through his teeth like sand through his fingers.  Piece by piece, it took with it the comfort and warmth he'd only just found.  He closed his eyes and inhaled sharply through his nose, pushing himself up to sit at the edge of the sofa. 

"Link, don't.  You don't have to—" Rhett's thought cut off as Link opened his eyes and saw that the stereo had been attached to nothing. 

"Where were you calling from?  That voicemail you left..."

Helpless quietude set the tone for Rhett's mumbled answer:  "I don't know."

A nauseating wave of understanding swelled inside of Link, cresting in a final question.  Rhett seemed to know it was coming.  Of course he did.  He pushed himself up, shaking his head as he spoke softly in halting, broken phrases.

"There's no need...to even acknowledge...Just don't ask."

But he did.  He had to.

"What day is it?"

Rhett's shoulders sank as he sighed.  He dropped back against the cushions as Link lurched forward, arms wrapping over the top of his head.  It took all that he had not to scream. 

There was more than confusion this time.  This was no drive down the coastal highway, no imagined flirting in Rhett's kitchen.  There was an epiphany too real to ignore at stake, an answer to thirty years of whispered questions being pulled away from him. 

His body shot up before his mind could catch it, and he found himself pacing back and forth in front of his television.  He stopped to look at the black screen and shook his head before throwing the heel of his hand into it.  The force should have knocked it off its mounting, sent it toppling down onto the stereo system below, but it did not move.  Link nodded, unsurprised, and returned to his pacing, becoming more of a wild-eyed caged animal with each step.

"Link."

"No.  Shut up.  Go away," he spat, waving a bitter dismissal at Rhett, who took it with impressive grace.

"Okay.  You're upset."

"Yeah!  Yes, I'm fucking upset.  I thought...Oh my god," he groaned, running his hand over his face.  "Why am I even bothering?"

As he uncovered his eyes, he caught Rhett shaking his head, his own gaze tinged with pity.

"What?" Link asked, voice sharp with frustration.

"I just...have you considered what I said the other night, when we were sitting on my floor?"

He thought for a moment, head subtly shaking, answering for him.  "That I can't control you?  That's great, buddy.  I don't give a shit."

Rhett surprised him by exhaling a laugh at his bitterness.  "No, not that.  Though I stand by it.  The other part.  Where I suggested that..." He paused to stand, rolling his shoulders before cautiously stepping toward Link.  "...that maybe you aren't asleep."  His gaze broke from Link's as his brow furrowed, unsatisfied with his own phrasing, though he never tried to correct it.  And Link gave him plenty of time to do so.  For a long, loaded moment, they stood face to face, Link doing little more than blinking, Rhett bearing the weight of his blank stare.  Finally, he narrowed his eyes and scoffed.

"You're trying to tell me I'm awake.  That this place where music plays from, just, nowhere, where electronics don't work, and you won't tell me what goddamn day it is...this is the world I've always lived in?"

Rhett held Link's gaze as he answered.  It seemed important that he do so. 

"No, Link.  That's not what I'm trying to tell you."


	4. The Cold

It had been years since they'd gone snowboarding together, but the idea had crept into one of their brains in late October.  Rhett couldn't remember who had mentioned it first; it had been tossed back and forth so many times that it didn't matter.  On a Monday, he would receive a link to a Colorado resort's holiday specials; by Friday, he'd be teasing Link about the reservations he'd made on the Sierra's Mammoth Mountain.   This went on until the week before Thanksgiving, when Rhett's casual research had uncovered a deal on a cabin in the San Bernardino Mountains for the week of Christmas.  In trying to fully book their lodge, the resort had run a half-off special for the holiday, and Rhett couldn't help but laugh knowing how such a promotion would appeal to Link's signature frugality.

"That could be hard on the kids, though, right?" Jessie had asked of the group while they huddled around her kitchen island, picking from a plate of cheese and bread.  From the living room, a peal of youthful laughter rang out, igniting an amused smile that passed from couple to couple.

"Oh, I think as long as they know we're still going to Carolina..." Link answered; then Christy chimed in.

"But being away for the actual holiday?  You know we'll have to take some gifts with us."

Jessie nodded, acknowledging the catch.

"Done.  No problem," Rhett agreed from his barstool.  "I don't think they'll complain.  I think they'll love it.  They'll never forget it."

"Yep.  Same," Link added, pushing himself up to sit on the counter, head leaning back against a cabinet after a particularly long Saturday. "We'll get 'em all outfitted, out in the snow.  They'll go crazy."

"I know," Christy groaned half-heartedly.  Rhett laughed.

"We'll be in charge outside.  We'll try to be grown-ups," Link added.  "Promise."

"Yeah, you promised me you'd stop sitting on my countertops, too, boy.  And there you are," Jessie chided, pulling the hand towel from the oven door's handle and whipping it at him.  "Get!"

Despite his flinching, Link tried to protest.  He always did.  "I got pants on!  It's not bare butt, woman!"

"Close enough!  Too close!  Get!"

He raised his palms in surrender and slid from his seat.

 

It took another two days of persuasive conversation with families on the east coast before a call was made and a four bedroom cabin was booked in the mountains.  They had arrived late on Friday night, spent Saturday on various beginner courses with their kids, and taken Sunday to explore the area and cook an impressive meal, healing sore muscles in preparation for their final day.  Link had even managed to sneak in a nap while his kids watched a movie upstairs, curling tightly into Christy's side as they lay on the lower level's oversized sofa.  Rhett had walked in on the sight, suppressing a laugh as Christy rolled long-suffering eyes over the pages of her paperback while Link snored softly into her shoulder.  Any other day it would have seemed too cramped for his liking, but with the snow glistening outside and the low flames popping in the corner fireplace, Rhett found himself in envy of the couple. 

 

The last morning passed in a frenzy of bunny slopes and lift rides until the youngest members of the group decided they were too tired or too bored to keep at it on the slickened powder.  Christy and Jessie took the kids back to the cabin for an afternoon of cat naps and board games while Link and Rhett worked their way through increasingly challenging runs.  The sun was sinking by the time they'd reached the bottom of the resort's single blue square run.  Their sides ached from laughing and hollering at each other, Rhett's arms waving wildly each time he nearly lost his balance, Link showing off an unexpected grace as he glided over low bumps and around subtle curves.  His luck made him cocky. 

"I don't think it's that bad.  I mean, look how many people are doing it.  There wouldn't be nearly as many people trying it if it was so hard," he'd said, eyes glued to the black diamond slope running down the mountain's south side. 

"Don't make me be that guy," Rhett groaned.  "Don't make me be the voice of reason.  You know better than this."

"I'm serious.  I think we can do it.  We'll take it slow, stay off to the side, out of the way."

"Link."

"Rhett," he shot back, mocking the gravity of Rhett's tone.  It earned him an arched brow.

"What would Christy say?" Rhett asked, already following Link toward the lift.

"She would remind me that I have a family and responsibilities and that breaking a leg never makes life easier.  So, good.  I know that already; you don't have to say it."

"But I have to scrape you up off the snow when you eat it on a drop."

Link snorted.  "Sure, let's pretend that's what you're worried about."

These were the words that haunted Rhett after he'd followed Link to the top of the run, after he'd repeated a silent prayer like a mantra before pushing off; after he'd followed a path parallel to Link's; after he'd thought at least three times that they were moving far too fast; after he saw Link attempt a sharp turn and watched the board slip out of his control, dragging him down into a tumble, hurling him into the trunk of an evergreen; after he'd ground himself to a violent stop and torn himself from his board; after he'd found Link gasping for air staring blindly up into the gray sky, eyes brimming with instinctive tears; after he'd dropped to his knees and asked Link if he was okay, if he was hurt, what had happened, and received no discernible answer; after he'd quickly and carefully pulled the goggles from Link's face, swallowed down his own panic at the sight of a distant, wandering gaze and, in an attempt to assess the mind behind it, asked the same question four times:

"What day is it?  Link, can you tell me what day it is?"

Wild blue eyes suddenly focused on his face with a jarring intensity as Link fought to catch the breath he'd lost.

"Should I know?  Is there something special about today?"

"No, buddy.  I just wanted to see if you knew.  You took a pretty rough fall.  Do you feel okay?"

"Well, what day is it, then?"

"...You don't know?"

"I'll know when you tell me.  It'll come back.  God, did you see that fall?  I think I hit my head."

"Yeah, Link, I saw it," Rhett answered, anxiously looking around for another skier to approach and exhaling with relief when an employee of the lodge came running over the slope.

"Oh, crap.  Am I bleeding?" Link asked, body lying eerily still on the snow.  Rhett tried not to visibly glance at the red painted tree trunk over Link's shoulder.  He failed.

"Maybe a little.  You're alright, though.  You're alright."

He tried to keep his face neutral, but the facade cracked as Link took a long breath and coughed, sputtering bright blood down his chin and onto the snow below.  They both froze for a moment upon seeing it.

"Shit," Link whispered, expressing only a fraction of Rhett's sentiment.  "I've just got to close my eyes for a second.  Don't let me fall asleep.  I think I hit my head," Link announced again, voice straining for humor but falling short.  Rhett grabbed his shoulders.

"No.  Link, no.  Keep 'em open.  Just keep talking.  You're good at that.  What do you want to do when you get home?"

"I want to sleep, man.  I'm so tired. My head hurts a little."  He worked his jaw as he thought, brow raising a wave of inspiration overcame his clearly spinning mind.  "Oh, I want hot chocolate.  That'd be nice.  Hot chocolate and a nap.  And Tylenol.  Hey, don't tell anyone about this."

Rhett felt himself smile in spite of his racing heart.  "Afraid you'll be in trouble?  Don't worry about it.  I've got your back," he said, reviving an old exchange from childhood.  The bloodied corner of Link's mouth curved upward for just long enough to give away his motive.

"It's not that," he said, sucking air through his teeth.  "It's just going to be a good story.  And I want to tell it."

"Okay.  You got it.  But right now, just focus on staying awake so someone can get a look at you.  Someone's coming; he'll call a medic, get you checked out.  They'll tell us you're fine, and then we can go home.  And you can tell your story," Rhett lied.

Link furrowed his brow, raising his hand toward the back of his head.  Rhett pushed it back down, sparing him the sight of any more of his own blood.

"Don't move.  Tell me what happened on that turn.  Do you remember?"

Link looked around him, eyes moving slowly, each blink more drawn out than the last. 

"Open your eyes, Link.  Look at me.  Link, look at me!"

But when Link wanted to sleep, he slept. 

Rhett felt his throat constrict as Link entered a darkness into which he could not be followed.  He'd sunk too quickly, and none of Rhett's prodding or questioning or shouting could bring him back to the surface. 

Waiting on the arrival of an emergency vehicle, Rhett held tight to Link's too-pliable frame, hoping to build some heat and trying to ignore the fact that the cold now piercing his own chest had nothing to do with the snow.


	5. Theft

He didn't feel at home anymore, so it was no surprise that the room had changed when Link opened his eyes again.  At this point, nothing was much of a surprise. Except, perhaps, what Rhett was about to say next.

That is why he'd closed his eyes and tried to shut out whatever world this was.  It was thrillingly effective: Rhett's voice, along with the tidal wave of words it was about to deliver, went silent.  This made sense, since the man himself had vanished entirely.

Link sighed, taking in the scene he'd unconsciously created.  He'd thought he did not want to be surrounded by imitations of his own home, so instead of faking the places he knew, he would not choose anything at all.  But as his surroundings seemed to be reflections of his own mind, he quickly realized that he did not know what nothingness actually looked like.  In hoping for a void, he got a familiar white room.  He recognized almost everything in it, from the crisp masonry around the lit fireplace to the snow-covered trees just outside the massive window. 

New to this visit was a series of photographs lining the oak mantle.  He approached the fireplace and shook his head at the warmth it gave off, wanting to dismiss the power of the illusion, but enjoying it all the same.  His fingers instinctively reached for the photos' silver frames, but stopped short to run along the rough wooden surface on which they stood.  He saw himself nearly twenty years younger in the first picture, reclining on a dark staircase with a plastic cup in his hand.  He was laughing, head thrown back and teeth bared at some off-the-cuff comment.  For a split second, he could feel the edges of the steps pressing into his back.  But these sharp angles were not what inspired the sudden rush of anxiety.

In the course of a single blink, he could picture the house party, feel the alcohol burning in his stomach, causing his muscles to twitch with artificially heightened energy.  He'd planted himself at the center of the house, perched halfway up the staircase so that anyone going up or down would have to acknowledge him.  But he hadn't wanted to catch—and potentially stop—just anyone.  He'd been hoping for one face in particular.  And the further he sank into his cup of sickly sweet fire, the less inclined he'd been to wait.

Before Link's eyes, in the confines of the frame, the small image of his sprawled body began to move, straightening itself from the stairs, shifting gaze scanning unseen faces in blurred distances until he turned his attention away, tearing himself from the mantle before he could watch his college self commit some deeply-buried transgression.  He couldn't remember what it had been, where his legs had tried to carry him, but he could sense that this was the origin of a chronic tightness in his stomach, and with the little control he had, he opted to ignore it.

In turning away from the fireplace, he ran directly into a body.

"Oh, gosh.  Sorry," he apologized instinctively, hand raising to brush off the blue suit jacket that had connected with his chin.  He looked down into the face of an older man, completely unfamiliar and easily forgettable.

"No problem.  Tight quarters, right?" he replied, laughing off the exchange and turning away into a sea of well-dressed middle-aged couples. 

Link recognized the setting, and stood motionless in the lobby of a reception hall.  A massive chandelier sparkled overhead, filling the close space with warm light.  As he glanced upward at it, bodies began dispersing, moving into a large hall that had only just opened.  Stringed instruments played over the dull roar of conversation, welcoming the crowd as it stranded Link in the lobby, unable to move.

He watched the backs of heads, hoping to recognize someone, trying to piece together the scene from memory before throwing himself into the back of the crowd, letting an inexplicable muscle memory direct him to a seat at a white linen covered table.  Seven empty chairs faced the tall floral centerpiece, waiting for guests that seemed to have lost their way.  The longer he sat at the table, the faster bodies seemed to move around him, until the room became a long-exposure blur of darkly colored trails, weaving in a constant pattern to and from the door, the bar, and an open dance floor.  A streak of white flitted across his vision and he exhaled in recognition.  While he could not place the people, at least he could place the event.

When the bodies slowed to a perceivable pace, he scanned the room for the bride.  She, whoever she was, would have the answers to the all the questions he guessed he had.

Link stood, running his hands along the front of his own black suit, smirking at the close fit of his jacket.  If this was a memory, his modern mind had altered it, for he could never remember having a suit fit so well as a younger man.  This, he thought in passing, was a shame.

He navigated the room carefully, unable to see over the mass of people to find his target.  With the friendliest smile he could manage, he slipped behind hugging friends and around swaying couples, working hard not to lose his bearings as the chandeliers dimmed and colored lights swirled around the space.  The further he walked, the longer the room became, ceaselessly filling with new people to maneuver around, blocking him from the familiar face he sensed was waiting for him. 

The live music faded into a blend of clichéd dance hits played over too-loud speakers, eliciting too much enthusiasm from newly rowdy guests.  Bland faces laughed at one another, ignoring Link in their reveries, bumping into him, even spilling heavy drops of champagne on his sleeve as he pushed through them.  Breathing became a chore, as he constantly caught whiffs of thick perfume and beer on breaths of raucous laughter.  Too quickly, he gave up on his search for a woman in white and instead, moved toward the edge of the room, inhaling deeply as he leaned against a cool wall. 

As he tried to control his breath, he watched faceless bodies swirl in front of him, ignoring his presence with remarkable ease.  The atmosphere sang of lighthearted happiness, but a dull ache in his chest kept him from surrendering completely to the crowd.  He was on a mission, even if he did not know the identity of his objective. 

Just as his lungs had settled, a glimmer of white flickered through the periphery.  His head whipped to the left to find it, and before he could tell himself to do so, he'd thrown himself into the mass again, clipping by shoulders with more intensity and fewer manners than before. 

When he finally caught up to her, the bride had stopped in a clearing of the crowd.  Frozen in the center of the suddenly open floor, she kept her back to Link, allowing him to break free of the forms that had barred his path.  He approached cautiously, trying to identify the small frame and dark hair before he reached his hand toward her shoulder. 

Just as he was about to make contact, he felt a violent jerk on his own arm, and he whipped around into a sight that instantaneously evaporated the tension from his body.  The relief itself was jarring.

In a sharp black tuxedo of his own, though not as well fitted as Link's, Rhett stared down at him, bare face pulled into a sideways grin.

"Took you long enough."

This made Link laugh.  He'd bought into the scene with everything but his sense of time. 

"Whatever you say.  Good Lord, look at you," he uttered, taking in the sight of a Rhett at least fifteen years his junior.  The anachronism of his own perceived appearance amused him, as it made it clear how far they had evolved in their age.  Rhett laughed and shook his head. 

"If that's as close as I can get to a compliment, I'll take it."  His expression darkened as his eyes scanned the faces around them.  Confirming the lack of attention focused on them, he nodded subtly, but Link only saw it from the corner of his eye.  He'd started to turn back toward the bride, privately fascinated with her identity and desperate to understand what made her such a force.  Rhett's voice drew his attention back, though, and he found himself looking up into a distracted face.  "Let's go."

"Go where?" Link felt a trickle of adrenaline stream through him, his stomach tightening in anticipation as Rhett flashed a smile, spun on his heels, and took off.  As he was motivated into a brisk walk, Link tried to look over his shoulder.  The bride turned slowly, revealing only part of her face before Link ran straight into another reveler, forcing his gaze forward as he untangled himself from a laughing young woman.  Repeating apologies, Link regained his balance but re-lost his bearings.  Behind him, the bride was gone.  Ahead of him, Rhett had disappeared.  He laughed at himself and could not deny the trill of hysteria in the sound as he turned in a circle, looking less for a familiar face and more for a way out. 

The music ringing out from the edge of the room melted into a heavy, deafening bass line, pounding away at his eardrums and drowning out the sounds of the celebration surrounding him.  He was tempted to drop, to sit on the floor, knees pulled into his chest until, one way or another, this dizzying scenario played itself out.  But the second his eyes drifted closed, his right hand was grabbed and pulled, yanking him forward, easily breezing through bodies that parted for him.  His feet moved frantically while his eyes fell to the hand clutching his own.  He squeezed it tightly, locking his hold in place for dear life, barely restraining himself from extending and adding his left hand to the mix for good measure.  In watching his grip, he ignored his surroundings, and was shocked to attention by a wall of cool, quiet air, his tired body emerging from the reception hall out into the open space of a balcony. 

"You're welcome."

Link looked up, unsurprised to find Rhett leaning against the balcony's handrail.  He forced a smile of gratitude and stepped up to the banister, leaving only inches between them as he looked out over a quiet river. 

"This is nice," he remarked, genuinely appreciating the crisp air soothing his lungs.

Rhett laughed.  "Small talk.  Interesting choice."

"Excuse me?"

Rhett shook his head and leaned his forearms onto the railing.  "Awfully heroic gestures to follow up with, 'This is nice,' man."  His voice was teasing, but Link thought he could discern a thread of sincerity.  It confused and frustrated him, as he was painfully lacking some information.  He ran his hand over his face and sighed.  Rhett shot him an evaluative glance, and Link chuckled helplessly.

"I don't know what you want from me.  I feel like I'm missing my half of the script here.  You're expecting me to say something, but...I feel like I've lost my mind."

"You have questions."

"Oh, too many to count.  I am paralyzed with questions."

"Don't be dramatic."

Link stiffened and turned to stare full-on at Rhett, face completely void of emotion and still conveying his astonishment. 

"What?" Rhett asked, frowning at the intensity of the reaction. 

"You cannot possibly..." Link began, dropping the thought as soon as he gave voice to it.  Rhett grinned mischievously, enjoying the rise he'd gotten.  The expression slipped through Link's defenses and made him smile in return, throwing his head back in playful exasperation.  Staring up at a sky full of stars, he convinced himself, if only for a while, to just stop fighting. 

Link turned his back to the railing and propped himself up to sit on its wide surface, ignoring the two story drop to a stone patio below.  He swallowed a wave of anxiety and sighed out a question, failing to consider the implications of its two possible answers.

"Do you remember...this sounds ridiculous.  Do you remember the other...day?  My house?  A storm had knocked out my TV..."

This Rhett still had half of their friendship to live before that electrifying afternoon would come around.  And yet.

"Of course," he answered, pushing himself up off the rail.  "Before you kicked me out?  I remember."

"Sorry about that," Link mumbled.  He meant it, at least for now.

"Understandable.  You were freaked out."

"I was.  I am still, a little.  I was and I am.  I don't know what tense to use there."

Rhett laughed, nodding at the conundrum.  "You have been freaking out.  Perfect present...progressive?"

"Something like that.  How do you even...never mind.  Of course you'd know something like that."

Rhett had started to object, but decided against it.  Instead, he returned to the question.  "Do I remember that afternoon...Why else would I bring you out here?"

Link furrowed his brow, then shook his head apologetically.  "Sorry.  I'm not following."

"It's a trope, isn't it?  You were losing it in there with all those people, so I brought you here, all alone, to catch your breath and remember what you were doing here in the first place."

"Here."

"This wedding.  _This_ wedding."

Link exhaled and nodded.  "So this _is_ a memory.  Dreaming via memory now...interesting..."  His eyes went distant as he tried to place it again.

"A creative retelling, if you so choose.  If it's just a dream, where's the harm in changing things up?"

"I can't control what I don't remember, though."

"You don't recognize anything?  The building?  The balcony?" Rhett asked, trying not to appear wounded. 

Link's focus returned, snapping quickly to Rhett's face and traveling the length of his body before the pieces snapped into place.  He narrowed his eyes and cocked his head.  "You." Rhett smiled proudly.  "I remember that tux, that hair."  Though he laughed in recognition, his stomach fluttered.  "This is _your_ wedding.  What am I doing here?"

"What are you doing here..." When Rhett said them, the words did not sound like a question, but more like an invitation.  He stepped closer, placing himself between Link's dangling legs.  "We both remember that afternoon, and here you are, seeking me out at my own wedding.  And here I am, letting you."

Link shook his head at the cliché of it all, but reached for Rhett's neck anyway, pulling him close enough for each to feel the other's breath.  "I'm saving you."

Rhett chuckled lowly, skimming his nose across his jaw, making Link shiver as the response hit his neck.  "I can assure you that I don't need saving."

This drug the truth into the light, thrashing and clawing inside Link's chest as he tightened his grip and pulled Rhett fully into him, connecting at the core as arms wound tightly around backs and held on for dear life:  "I'm stealing you." 

Rhett smiled against his neck in a surprisingly lighthearted reaction to a monumental confession.  "Then steal me."

Link pulled back, searching for clarity in a face younger than his own.  It smirked at him, a single upward flicker of a strong brow igniting his muscles into action.  He slid off the rail and with Rhett's hand again clasped tightly within his own, he walked toward the edge of the building.  The journey immediately turned clandestine, and they laughed at each other as they ducked under windows and slipped past open doors, avoiding the attention of the guests moving about inside. 

Around the corner, a limousine waited at the building's front step.  With a quick glance backward into the hall's lobby, Link dragged Rhett toward the car, smirking as the driver opened the back door without question.  He stepped in quietly, only to erupt into laughter as Rhett entered after him, pulling the door closed behind him and immediately shoving Link down onto the side bench. 

"Where are we going?" Link asked, suddenly giddy with the excitement of the unreality, arms thrown carelessly over his head.

"Who knows?  We could drive all the way to California for all I care," Rhett answered, running warm hands up Link's sides, pushing his jacket up and off of his arms, then dropping a series of kisses along his jaw.  "Take us wherever you want.  Just don't get rid of me this time."

Link couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of the suggestion, but his outburst dissolved into a groan at the heavy roll of Rhett's hips.  "Oh, are you serious..." he muttered thoughtlessly, shocked at how solid, warm, and undeniably _good_ Rhett's weight felt on top of him.

"I am now," Rhett replied, fingers working quickly to unbutton Link's shirt.  It soon separated, exposing an expanse of skin that he could hardly wait to taste.  His large hands wrapped around Link's waist, holding him down as his tongue painted an obscene trail from navel to neck.  Link writhed, jaw slackened and eyes nearly rolling backward.  As kisses along his ribs alternated with nips, he felt consciously grateful for the years that this man had spent in braces.  Rhett's teeth were safe, beautifully straight and reliable, and far less likely to wound than his own. 

"This isn't real, right?" Link mused, voice high and airy and not at all minding Rhett's answer, delivered in a mumble from the curve of his waist.

"Okay."

"But earlier, before I showed up here, I was thinking about Jason Kimball's party, junior year.  At that frat house, remember?"

Rhett laughed darkly as he nodded his head.

"That _was_ real, wasn't it?"  Link asked, though he didn't know why he expected an illusion to tell the truth.

"Oh, buddy, it was real."

"Why was I thinking about it?"

Rhett tightened his grip, digging his finger into Link's skin.  "Please don't try to check out again..."

"I'm not," Link replied quickly, soothingly, before pulling at Rhett's shoulders so they lay face to face again.  "I'm staying put.  I'm just wondering why I was thinking about that party right before I showed up...at your wedding.  To—apparently—take you away.  I feel like I have holes in my memory, and it's driving me a little nuts.  And I feel like I can enjoy myself in whatever this is a whole lot more if I can just make some connections..." He knew that Rhett could sense his tension in the speed of his words, and the fact that they'd come spilling out in one long breath. 

"So, what, you want me to tell you the story?" Rhett asked.

"You should remember it better.  It happened much more recently for you," Link answered, smiling playfully, endlessly amused by their age gap.

"Okay," Rhett sighed, dropping onto the floor of the limo to sit at eye level with Link, who rolled onto his side on the bench.  "We'd been on a winning streak of drinking games, doling out punishments as the famously creative team we were.  We made a couple wear each other's clothes for the night.  We made Tom Richards streak halfway down the street."  Link laughed as these memories instantly filled in with vivid color.  "And then we took on these girls from the sorority down the block, and I don't even remember what we were trying to do, beer pong I think, but we lost horribly, and they sentenced us to a three minute—"

"Make out."

Rhett laughed and narrowed his eyes in a wince.  "Yeah, there it is.  All comin' back, huh?"

"But we didn't do the three minute make out."

"No, we didn't," Rhett agreed, nodding as his eyes went distant, looking back into the memory for himself.  "We did it for six.  And not...not as a stunt.  Not to prove a point.  But because no one told us to stop."  Link's ears burned with a renewed wave of embarrassment for his college-aged self as Rhett finished his thought.  "We did it for twice as long as needed because we liked it.  _You_ liked it," he corrected quickly, but too late for Link to believe it.  He let it go.

"And then we couldn't be around each other for the rest of the party because it was...weird."

"Yep.  That's what we thought.  Please don't turn this into that night.  I really don't want to go back there."

"There was more, though...What was I doing on the stairs?"

"That's where you put yourself to keep away from me."

Link rubbed his hands over his face and shook his head.  "Oh, I understand too well how that memory got me here..."

"Don't be embarrassed," Rhett cooed, pulling the hands off of Link's face.  "I'm not judging you.  I'm glad you're here.  In fact," he said, tugging at the wrist in his grip, "I wish you were closer."

Link let himself be pulled, his limbs slipping, stretching, and bending until he straddled Rhett's lap, helping him awkwardly out of his own jacket, then out of the vest beneath it.  Their bodies moved heavily, and Link felt drunk with possibility.  Rhett was with him completely, in a world of his making, without definite consequence. 

What felt entirely authentic, though, was the connection of their lips as Link sank into a heavy kiss, holding the sides of Rhett's face unnecessarily tight.  Their tongues came together violently, dying to taste the remnants of imagined champagne and every other unique flavor of their mouths.  They held together for ages, until Link lifted out of the kiss to catch his breath, resting his forehead against Rhett's as he panted, shivering under the caress of the long fingers that had worked their way under his open shirt and around to his back.  While his own thumb grazed softly over the smooth hollow of Rhett's cheek, Link crinkled his nose and bit his lip. 

"What?" Rhett asked, nudging with his nose.  Link shook his head.

"This is so nice.  But a little weird.  I think I like...hmm..."

"Are you about to hurt my feelings?" Rhett asked teasingly. 

"No, no.  It's nothing," Link responded quickly, trying to forget a revelation that perhaps he did, in fact, prefer Rhett in his late thirties.  He was glad to have what he could get, he realized, and he dropped to meet him in another deep kiss that lasted until the limousine came to a smooth stop.  Their eyes still closed, Link could feel Rhett smile as he whispered.

"I think we're here."

 _Here_ meant nothing, but Link nodded and pushed himself up anyway, abandoning his suit jacket to the car's interior as he moved toward the opening door.  As he stepped out, a hearty laugh bubbled out of him, only furthering the sense of warm intoxication.  His head fell back heavily as he looked up at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

"Santa Monica.  Of course.  Why not?" he uttered, shrugging in immediate acceptance and turning to glance back at the car before resettling his gaze on the glamorous giant of a building.  "'We could drive to California,'" he mumbled in a halfhearted imitation of Rhett, before a slap on his back spurred him out of his quiet stupor.  He froze for just a moment to smile as Rhett wordlessly walked past him, raking his fingers through perfectly coiffed hair before scratching absently at his beard.  His blue patterned suit fit him far better than the tuxedo, and Link watched the subtle rock of his hips as he walked ahead, leading them through the elegant lobby of the hotel toward the elevators at the back of the building. 

They didn't speak until the elevator doors closed, isolating them from the faceless beings that now made up the rest of the world.  Rhett sucked his teeth and leaned nonchalantly into the corner of the car while Link rested his head against one mirrored side wall, watching their reflections in its opposite. 

"Alright," Rhett drawled in a low purr. "What are we doing _here_?" 

"We won..." Link's eyes traveled up toward the ceiling in search of the words, but they did not seem important enough to recall. "...something.  We won something.  And when we won it, we just...went back to our rooms.  We were...tired?  We didn't really do anything."

"And we had already taken everyone out the week before," Rhett reminded him.

"Yeah," Link replied, tongue heavy in his mouth, reminding him of the drinks he'd had at whatever ceremony they'd attended earlier this particular evening.  "But this night.  Tonight.  We really won, and we never celebrated."  The recollection sounded like a tragedy of the worst kind coming out of his mouth.

Rhett closed his eyes and smiled to himself, tempting Link to prey on his motionlessness.  But for the duration of the ride, they kept their hands to themselves, sensing that restraint now would pay off later.  It felt like days passed before they reached their desired floor, but eventually, the elevator dinged and Rhett opened his eyes.

"Let's celebrate."


	6. The Heat

The door banged against the wall, they'd opened it with such force.  Link laughed, checking the modern wallpaper for a mark he knew would not be there.

A silver lamp on the nightstand had been left on, offering a warm glow to welcome them into the upscale hotel suite.  This room was far nicer than anything they could have afforded only a couple years before, and recognizing this fact only gave them further cause for celebration.  Not that they needed it.

Rhett closed the door behind them as Link stepped into the center of the room, chuckling at the sight of a bottle of champagne left for them on the dresser across from the single king bed.  Next to it, a white card read "Drink Me" in elegant script.  He held it up and arched an eyebrow while Rhett scratched his beard thoughtfully.

"Who are we to disobey?" he asked, reaching for the bottle and pulling it from its glass bucket along with several slick ice cubes. 

"Will it make us bigger or smaller?" Link asked, kicking off his shoes and dropping to sit at the edge of the wide bed. 

"I don't get any smaller.  I've tried," Rhett said wistfully, twisting off the cage and pressing carefully at the cork.  It popped; they cheered.  Then they noticed the lack of flutes.  It took no time at all to admit that they did not care, and Rhett sat across from Link, pulling his right foot in tight to his left thigh, letting their knees graze each other in the process.  Link could have sworn he saw a flicker of light in the contact.

"What do we toast?" Rhett asked, raising the bottle between them. 

Link tilted his head as he stared into the green glass.  "To winning...to thriving.  To making a living making each other laugh.  And occasionally gag."

"Pick one."

"Okay.  To this," Link said, breaking his gaze from the bottle and resettling it boldly in Rhett's eyes, the heat of it catching the taller man's attention.  "To whatever the hell is going on here.  To embracing this confusing mess of a dream or nightmare or whatever it'll be...and making the most of it."  A chill ran through him when he acknowledged this fantastical world for what it was, but he did not shy away from it this time.  He consciously opted not to pull it apart, but rather, to see what he could do with it while he had it.

"I'm in," Rhett agreed, taking a long swig from the bottle before handing it over.  Link then did the same, savoring the unexpected sweetness in the bubbles as they rushed through him.  He pulled away too soon, and a thin drop slid from the corner of his mouth, reaching his neck in record speed.  As soon as his free hand instinctively rose to wipe it away, it was batted down, its duty fulfilled by the tip of a warm tongue.  The shiver returned with a vengeance.  Rhett noticed.

"This is okay, right?" he asked, breath hot on Link's neck.  It was not as easy to reply as Link had thought it would be.  The answer stuck in his chest, too far from his throat to even warrant a mumble, so he forced himself to nod. 

"Okay. You're the boss," Rhett whispered, smiling as a hand darted to the back of his head, drawing him closer.  His words had pierced Link's brief daze and driven him to move. 

As teeth sank into the skin above his collar, Link groaned roughly.  The exhale evolved into a laugh as he considered the scene: there he sat in a sleek burgundy suit on the bed of a four star hotel room, a champagne bottle in one hand and a fistful of Rhett's hair in the other.  It was the image of indulgence, a blissful surrender to several sins. A deep whine escaped him as Rhett began pushing the jacket from his shoulder.  He shrugged away, sighing as Rhett broke the contact on his neck to look at him, an expression of concern on his face. 

"Too fast?" he asked sincerely. 

"No, I just...I really like this suit.  I feel important."

"You _are_ important.  You're the brain behind an award-winning comedic duo," Rhett purred, returning his attention to the angles of Link's jaw.

"I'm the brain, huh?  What does that make you?" Link asked, taking another pull from the bottle and nearly choking when Rhett answered without skipping a beat.

"The looks.  Obviously."

His ego could handle it, so Link threw his head back and laughed, allowing Rhett a moment to pry the bottle from his hand and take a drink.  He stood and stretched to place it back on the dresser, and Link guessed that his staring could be felt.  Rhett turned back slowly, lips curled into a devious grin. 

"So, you like my clothes, too, then?  Do I look important, too?" he asked, kicking off his own shoes.

"I do.  You do.  We look good, don't you think?"

Rhett slid back onto the bed with an innocent shrug.  "Maybe I think you always look good."

"And maybe you're a liar.  I'll remind you again of the gagging."

"Maybe I like that..."

"You're disgusting."

"And a liar.  But I'm with you on this one: we look good.  Let's keep 'em on."

Link felt his brow shoot up at the idea that taking them off had actually been on the table.  But the sense of surprise quickly dissolved under the pressure of an arm clothes-lining him down onto his back.  Before he could catch his breath, he was looking up at the smug face of Rhett and feeling the heat of long legs framing his own hips.  He'd been where Rhett was; he vividly recalled the rush of adrenaline that went with towering over his friend, knowing that it was within his power to so easily connect their bodies where they'd never connected before.  Rhett, on the other hand, was accustomed to looking down, and Link wondered if that was why he looked so at home straddling his legs, silently reaching for his wrists and pushing them into the pillows over his head with one hand while the other wrapped loosely around the corners of his jaw, holding him down in order to deliver a deep and merciless kiss that left Link gasping for air at its end.  Somewhere along the way, he'd closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, Rhett was grinning down at him.

"What?" he asked, face starting to warm under the attention.

Instead of speaking his answer, Rhett lifted himself from Link's legs and dropped his weight higher, inspiring Link to laugh darkly at the pleasure that rolled through him.  His head was floating, but his body felt grounded to the bed.  He could not imagine leaving it, instead wanting only to yield to Rhett's touch, to move only under the control of Rhett's muscles.

His stillness could not prevent a heat from coursing through him, though, building slowly with every graze of a beard against his skin.  He bit his lip and sighed, speaking his mind when Rhett tilted his head in question.

"Maybe just the jackets."

A quiet laugh accompanied their separation as Rhett sat back and peeled off his blue blazer.  Link curled upward and matched the movement, racing to be the first to free his arms, but happy to lose all the same.  Large palms spread over his ribs, gliding easily across the fabric of his shirt and falling to rest at his shoulder blades, cushioning his descent back onto the bed before pulling his chest tight to Rhett's as their mouths met again.  They embraced with enough force to press the air from his lungs.  He did not miss it.

His left palm flattened against Rhett's back while the fingers of his right hand twisted into sandy blond hair.  He could not tell who controlled the motion as Rhett's face dropped to side of his neck, a straight line of teeth scraping against his own shadow of stubble.  Too busy trying to remember to breathe, Link hardly noticed the fingers that had slid to his collar and worked gently at his tie.  It was only when the fabric was sliding out from around his neck that he recognized Rhett's work. 

"Hey...what did I say?" he tried to scold, failing to feign concern.

"Okay.  I'll stop," Rhett said, smiling into his skin as he reached delicately for his glasses.  "Just let me have these, and I'll stop."

"I don't know why I keep wearing them," Link admitted, voice light and carefree as the plastic frames slid from his face and disappeared over his head.  "I can see without them."

"Maybe we should remedy that," Rhett hummed, voice dangerously low, sending a shockwave straight to Link's stomach.  Before he could respond, Link saw his world go blue, covered over by the silky fabric of his tie. His eyes pressed closed under its pressure as he let it be tied at the back of his head.

"Aren't you something..." he grumbled as his lips stretched into a wide grin, a dark brow arching over the blue blindfold.  Rhett laughed quietly, taking quick advantage of his position to pepper Link's neck with feathery kisses.  Without his vision, Link found that he was ticklish, anxious for touches he couldn't predict, and he squirmed beneath Rhett.  His writhing was noticed; it earned him a bite at his shoulder, sending him into a passive state of surrender.  Of course, the second Rhett got what he'd wanted, he was on to the next idea.

Link's legs cooled quickly as Rhett slid off of them, falling to rest at his side.  He offered Link no respite, no chance to think or even catch his breath before grabbing his arms and yanking him up and over, placing him in his own former position.  Link wasted no time in sinking down onto Rhett's pelvis, drawing forth a deep rumble of appreciation. 

"Wish I could see the face that goes with _that_ sound," he said quietly, casually raising and lowering his hips again, grinding even harder against an obvious protrusion.

"I bet you do.  How 'bout you settle for using those hands, instead?"

A low laugh rolled out of Link as he dropped his fingers lightly onto Rhett's stomach and slid them up, gliding them over the peaks and valleys of a long ribcage.  He sighed as he let them catch and slip on the smooth shirt that could never have protected Rhett from the dangerous angles of his teeth had he chosen to use them. 

Without his sight, Link's brain had to work overtime to conjure sounds and sensations fast enough for him to enjoy in real time.  Whatever had possessed him to allow Rhett to blindfold him had also forced him to burn too quickly through his own creativity.  When hands finally gripped his waist, he flinched at how delicate they felt.  Still, he let them travel down over his hips, grazing his waistband along the way, tugging playfully at textile confines. 

"Was that a shiver?" asked a voice undeniably Rhett's.  "Or are you just buzzing with excitement?  Starting to melt already?"

"You wish."

"I do.  And you must be in the granting mood," he fired back, voice gruff as he bucked his hips, jerking Link forward, forcing him to catch his balance by placing both hands firmly on the chest below him.  Rhett laughed.  "Come on, now.  You're the only blind one here.  Give me something to look at."

"So demanding," Link whispered, letting his hands be directed to his own groin.  As he slowly worked at his belt, Rhett's quiet laugh of satisfaction vibrated up through his body; at this point, there was no move that one could make without the other knowing.  Just as the metal buckle clanged against the thin carpet, Link unfastened the button of his fly.  "This is insane," he exhaled, lips pulling into a sheepish smile.

"That's okay.  Let it be.  It's just you and me."  Rhett's voice was quiet, but his words reverberated in Link's head.  They moved him to bite his lip and free himself of his tight underwear, burgundy pants still riding loosely on his hips; they inspired him to loosen his grip on his conscience and tighten his grip on himself. 

"There you go," Rhett groaned, rocking up against him, sucking in a breath through closed teeth.  Link could only imagine what he looked like as he watched, but such was the beauty of his blindness: he could have all the fun of being looked at without any of the uncomfortable intensity of looking back.    

He was surprised at how long he stayed quiet, but eventually, the feel of his own expert touch combined with the illicit novelty of his company forced a quiet whimper from his throat.  The sound seemed to trigger a similar need in Rhett, and Link found himself nudged backward, forced to make room for another pair of hands between them.

The sounds and vibrations told the story of Rhett mirroring Link's act from his position on his back, and the thought alone ignited a warmth in Link's stomach that brought him dangerously close to the edge.

"God, you look good.  You look so good," Rhett grunted through his own exertion, igniting another sinful grin on Link's face.  But as a thin hand ran up his warm thigh, Link felt his smirk fall.  The fingers simply seemed too small, and they snagged his concentration.  He tried to ignore the disparity, but his skin prickled beneath the touch. 

He attempted a cleansing breath, letting his jaw relax as the oxygen flushed through him, intensifying the sensation of his own slickening grip.  He knew that this act, this performance for _this_ audience could lead him to brand new euphoria, and he wanted it.  He craved it, having now crossed fully into this long forbidden territory.  But with the touch of this hand both contextually foreign and achingly familiar, his release became an animal, frantic and running wildly out of his reach. 

He pushed the hand off of him, letting his own press into the bones of Rhett's hip.  It started to slide inward, drawing a moan from the man beneath him, but at the first graze of close coarse hair, he instinctively jerked it away, burying it safely in his own dark locks.

"You can touch me," Rhett promised quietly, "you're allowed."

"I'm almost..." Link heard himself say, trembling at low groan his words inspired.  A small hand landed on his chest, sliding up to his neck and lightly scratching at his skin with long, smooth fingernails.  He flinched out of the grip, feeling his bliss slip further away.

"I can't touch you?" Rhett asked, voice newly wounded.

"No, it's not..." Link struggled to speak, losing interest in his pleasure and yet shackled to his pursuit.  An inexplicable wave of heat rushed over him, and he felt himself sweating in desperation. 

"What is it?" Rhett asked.  "Tell me what to do."

"I can't...I'm losing it.  I have to see you.  I have to look at you."

The tie came off of his face in a flash, but his skin felt wildly hotter without it.  Strong arms slipped around him, maneuvering his body easily, returning him to his back. 

"I'm here," Rhett whispered, planting thick kisses along his jaw again, patiently waiting for Link to open his eyes.  "It's still me.  Just you and me," he swore, running his hand along the length of Link's side.  This time, it felt right.  The fingers were heavy and long, and they pressed against him with a bruising force that screamed Rhett's name.  "I've got you," he spoke into Link's neck, breath surprisingly cool as it trickled down under his collar.  All the while, Link chased his climax, letting his muscles burn with exertion as it quickly became inevitable. 

"You said you wanted to see me.  So look at me," Rhett commanded from above him.

It took great concentration, but Link finally coerced his eyelids open, if only halfway.  In the bleary room beyond, Rhett flashed a hungry grin, waiting for their eyes to meet before he let his hands wander over Link's fevered body. 

It was only as he looked up into Rhett's face again that Link could identify the sensation keeping his release at bay: a spark of guilt had flashed inside of him.  He was hardly surprised to see in the periphery that it had ignited the rest of the room.  The only surprise was how little he cared.

The flames burned at a distance, encircling the bed, burning away the wallpaper, the furniture, and the entire world for all he cared, preserving the only two people that he thought mattered within it, tangled together and losing themselves in each other's gaze.

He wrestled with the undercurrent of shame for only a moment longer before forfeiting his subconscious search for its cause and surrendering his attention entirely to the sound of Rhett's deep voice.  

"Come on, Link.  For me.  Just for me."

If the roughness of the words was an encouraging nudge, the wanton press of Rhett's body against Link's side was a violent shove into an electric nirvana.  Link's eyes rolled toward the ceiling as he came, mindlessly watching flames leave black scorch marks across the white paint as Rhett's tongue did the same to the skin of his neck.

 

 

 

 

He hadn't known he'd closed his eyes until they pried open again.  The shift in setting, if not expected, proved less jarring: he was happy to be back in his own bed, and unbothered by the half-naked body curled against him. 

"You're back," Rhett whispered, straightening out of Link's embrace to drop a light kiss on his temple. 

"Did you see...did you see what I saw?" Link croaked, his throat convincingly dried out.

Rhett just laughed.  Link accepted the increasingly familiar non-answer.

"What a trip," he sighed.  "It was unreal.  I mean, just being there, I guess.  With you, I mean."

"You didn't give me much of a choice.  I had to 'just be there.'  Imagine if you'd have let me in on it," Rhett purred, sliding his hand heavily up Link's side until he rolled out of his reach. 

"I know.  I just had this feeling, though.  I mean, I took you away from your wedding."

Rhett shrugged.  "Maybe.  But it's not like we called it off.  Maybe that's worth something.   And I did go willingly.  Good memory, by the way."

"Okay.  I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that, but...I was hallucinating, I think.  These hands, this feeling of..." He shook his head and exhaled the thought away, pushing himself up at the edge of the bed.  "Whatever.  Doesn't matter."

He slid out of the bed and raised his arms over his head, yawning his body into an evocative stretch that left Rhett staring from his place at the center of the mattress.  Link pulled straight the covers on his side, playfully working around Rhett's arms to flatten the blankets into some semblance of a tightly made bed.  Greedy hands grasped for his wrists, but he pulled out of reach.  In doing so, his hip knocked the nightstand, sending a picture frame clattering face down.  Rhett grew still.

As he turned the picture over in his hands, Link felt the thread of guilt that had woven itself through his night wrap and tighten around his neck.  From the glossy 5x7, a blonde woman with her arms wound around his shoulders smiled up at him.

Rhett sighed.  "Looks like it matters, after all."


	7. Knowing

The wood of the frame dug into the skin of his hand as he gripped it more tightly than necessary.  His attention was now glued to the kind eyes looking up at him from its faded photo as his mind raced in trying to speak the name on the tip of his tongue.  The room was silent for a long moment as his brain careened through years of memories in search of something familiar.

"I know her.  I mean, obviously; she's hugging me.  But...I _know_ this woman.  How do I know her?"  Link asked without looking up.  His head pounded with the effort of searching for a name, a memory to which he could anchor this smiling face.  His concentration blinded him to the green eyes blazing into him from only three feet away.  They were persistent nonetheless.

"What?" he asked, flinching as he caught Rhett staring not just at, but into him.  He'd propped himself on his elbow, so when his head fell back in exasperation, it showed off the lines of his neck. 

"Nothing," he sighed, shaking his head as it rolled back up.  "Just suffering the sting of losing your attention.  I'm used to it."

Link bristled, dropping the picture to his side, but not letting it go.  "Excuse me?"

Rhett arched an eyebrow as he spoke: "Well, I mean, when do you really fully dedicate your time to...You're always getting distracted.  I notice, you know."

"Dedicate my time to what, exactly?  What was the rest of that sentence?"

"To me.  When do I really have your full attention?  I just got a taste, and you're taking it away to focus on..." He nodded at the picture frame.

"Do you know who this is?" Link asked, raising the frame.  Rhett did not answer.  He simply rolled onto his back and stretched his arms over his head, lengthening his exposed torso in a feline stretch that he must have known would strike a nerve in Link.  At the shameless display, Link bit into his own lip.

"What's that about?" he finally asked as Rhett's stretch ended with a new posture: hands behind his head, t-shirt haphazardly tugged upward enough to show off a faint trail of light hair.  He widened his eyes innocently.

"What?"

Link narrowed his eyes, recognizing the attempt at distraction, but not brushing it off completely.  He shook his head and looked back at the photo.  "I know her."

"Okay.  You know her."

"Why do I feel so...I felt so bad..."

"Have you considered that you have a gift for making yourself feel bad?  It's a ridiculous gift, but a gift all the same."

"Tell me how I know her."

Rhett looked toward the ceiling, lips pulled tight into a defiant silence. 

"I might as well ask what day it is."

"Oh good, we've moved past that."

"Yeah, maybe I've moved past expecting any help from you," Link snapped.  His gaze returned to the photo with such concentration that he jumped when a hand came down on top of the frame, pulling it out of his grip.  "Hey!"

"Come now.  How can I answer if I can't see what you're talking about?" Rhett huffed, pulling the picture back to the opposite side of the bed with him.  "Past expecting any help...please," he grumbled, taking a long look at the photo and shaking his head.  "I know her, too."

"Not surprising.  I bet, though...I bet..." Link murmured half his thought as he extended his hand for the photo again.  When Rhett didn't give it over, he braced himself for an argument.  But with his sense of control slipping through his fingers, he gripped to what he could, and simply walked toward the bedroom door.

"Hey, wait..." Rhett protested, scrambling out of bed in his wake.

 

Link had known what waited on the other side of the door; he'd put it there.  So this time, the brightness of the white room did not hurt his eyes. 

He crossed the cool floor with long, frantic strides, brushing a fur blanket on the edge of the crisp sofa with the back of his hand.  The tickle stuck with him as he came to a halt at the fireplace, squinting in concentration at the line of photographs resting above it.  For the second time, his fingers slid along the wooden mantle, tracing his path through a college house party to a crowded reception hall.  He immediately recognized the tuxedos and felt the beginnings of a smile as he identified Rhett in the background leaning down to listen to a man who looked much like himself.  Behind them, an empty balcony waited for a secret escape that never really occurred.  None of the faces between the camera and its focus seemed familiar.  Still, he scanned them all again.  The third picture in line had fallen over and balanced precariously face-down at the edge.  As he reached for it, his knuckle grazed the unfinished mantle, resulting in a sharp prick as a splinter of wood dug beneath his skin.  He flinched and yanked his hand back.

"Did it bite?"

Link turned to the sound of Rhett's voice and shuddered at the sight of him.  He leaned onto the back of the couch on his forearms, now covered in a thick black sweater.  In one hand, he loosely held the picture frame he'd taken from Link; in the other, he palmed a white mug of hot chocolate.  Link took a deep breath, releasing it slowly through his nose as an ominous tingle ran through his legs.  He wanted to speak, to announce his recognition of the details of the room, of the man opposite him, of the fact that he'd come full circle in returning to this space, but a sudden weariness stilled his tongue. 

"I don't have to tell you who she is.  You know," Rhett told him, gently tossing the picture frame face-down onto the coffee table.  Link tensed, anticipating a shatter of thin glass that never came.  "But that doesn't mean you have to worry about it right now.  We can have more time.  You just have to say it's okay."

Link crossed his arms, trying to will away the faint ache growing at his left temple.  "For what?  More time for what?  What am I approving, here?"

Rhett shrugged and stood up, a suddenly imposing figure in the white room.  "More time for us.  To talk, to laugh, to just be idiots.  More time for you to rest.  I mean, do you feel like you've done that at all?"

"Should I?  Is that what I'm supposed to be doing?" Link asked, momentarily forgetting Rhett's penchant for ambiguity.  When he received no verbal answer, he rolled his eyes.  "You don't know."

"I know that I'm here.  I keep showing up.  And there's got to be something to that.  Why do you keep trying to get away from me?"

The pain in Link's head flared, shooting down to his chest at the question.  He stepped forward.  "Don't say it like that.  I'm not trying to...I'm not.  I'm just trying to get some answers."

Rhett turned, setting his mug on the small kitchen counter behind him.  Link froze, watching him sigh deeply and eye the heavy wooden door at the back of the room.  "You aren't asking the right questions."  Without hurry, he moved to the door and pressed it open, stepping into the blinding light that poured in from beyond. 

Link followed, glancing over his shoulder at the face-down picture teetering at the edge of the mantle and commanding himself not to forget about it.

 

An icy winter wind whipped around him the second he crossed the threshold, stinging his face upon impact.  As his eyes adjusted to the brightness of the landscape, a wave of nausea passed through him. 

In following Rhett, he'd left the safety of the indoors and found himself atop a mountain, snowy cliffs painting the horizon in vast whites and grays that made it hard to see where the jagged peaks ended and the clouded sky began.  The air was fierce and loud, howling as it carried drifts of snow from one valley to the next, eroding the smaller powdered hills along the way.  He felt dangerously light and rootless; his footfalls could not even penetrate the snow on the ground.  He moved cautiously, slipping here and there as he approached Rhett's back at the edge of an untamed route straight down the side of the mountain. 

"Okay," he said, finally stepping up next to Rhett, who did not even flinch as the wind dragged flakes across his face.

"Okay," Rhett repeated, staring out at the mountains in the distance, ignoring the dangerous drop only a few steps in front of him.  Link followed his gaze and nodded.

"I'm asking the wrong questions.  I want to ask what the hell we're doing out here, but I suppose that's not going to get me anywhere, huh?"

"I'm sure it's relevant, somehow.  But you must not be ready to know."

Link nodded.  "Okay.  What am I not asking..." The question was already on his tongue.  He'd felt it there for a while now, but kept finding ways to distract himself from it.  He shook his head and pulled his arms tight around himself, wishing he'd been granted clothing as heavy as Rhett's.  Instead, he suffered the violent winds from beneath a thin white long-sleeved t-shirt.   "Okay," he announced again, bracing himself with a breath so deep that it burned his lungs.  "Why's it you?  Why is it always you?  I know other people.  We're not the only two in the world.  Why can't I remember anyone else's name, anyone else's face?  Why are you the only one showing up in...this?  Here?"

Rhett smiled and nodded approvingly, but he kept his eyes on the horizon.  "There it is."

"So tell me."

"Can't.  Wouldn't want to ruin the fun."

"The fun?  Really?"

"How quickly you forget the Hilton."  At this, his eyes slid sideways, if only to catch a glimpse of Link's shocked expression, before returning to the mountains.

"That's not fair.  That wasn't..."

"It was just as real as this.  You were just as in charge then as you are now."

"So...not at all, then."

"Or entirely."

"How do I get out of this?" Link asked, steering away from the memory of the hotel room and all the threatening feelings that went with it.  He held his breath until Rhett spoke again.

"You might have to start _answering_ your questions.  Asking more only seems to make things worse."

"How so?"

"It's cold out here, for starters.  That's worse."

" _You_ came out here!  And you already told me, I don't get to control you."

Rhett's brows lifted in approval.  "You've been listening.  So focus.  Get us out of here.  Why me?"

Link rubbed the side of his face, trying to suppress the ache that had started to sharpen into a throb. 

"You're familiar.  I've known you longer than just about anyone."

"True.  I wonder what that has to do with anything," Rhett said coolly, turning his attention to his fingernails, idly picking at them in a gesture entirely too casual for his position so close to the drop.  Link let his eyes watch Rhett's hands while his brain spun out, desperate for traction.  The sting in his own knuckle reminded him of the line of pictures above the white fireplace and he sighed in illumination.

"Landmarks.  Holy shit.  I'm putting myself back together.  You're leading me back.  The wedding, the party, the award...It's all a means of reorienting, right?" He laughed, giddy with a sense of understanding.  "Oh my God...finally.  It feels crazy to say that out loud.  Holy shit," he sighed, rubbing his eyes.  Beside him, Rhett nodded slowly, face uncharacteristically emotionless as he repeated after Link.

"Holy shit," he whispered with mock enlightenment.

Link frowned, but he chose not to pursue the negativity.  "I'm going to be okay.  I just have to figure this out, right?  I just have to remember."

"That's it," Rhett said dryly, letting his arms fall to his sides.  "So, what do you remember?"

Link stared up at Rhett for a long moment, waiting for a landslide of pieces to fall into place.  When they did not, he bit his lip and feigned a smile. 

"Might take longer than that.  I assume I have a whole life to reassemble."

"Maybe work backward," Rhett suggested, crossing his arms and chancing a look down the descent.

Link nodded and closed his eyes, teeth starting to chatter in the cold.  "Good idea.  So..." he chuckled at the absurdity of the task, "what the hell happened to me?"  As he tried to think, the wind picked up.  As if in response to the sound and scrape of snow against his skin, Link saw the darkness behind his eyelids flash red.  His hands flew to his face as a deep pain seared the left side of his head, stretching from his temple downward across his jaw and upward to his hairline.  Only once his eyes shot open did the pain fade.  But now, he could feel his own pulse in his face.

"I hit my head," he announced, nodding with certainty as he looked up to Rhett for confirmation. 

"Ooh," Rhett replied, lifting his hand to drag his fingers lightly through Link's hair, brushing his thumb gently over the source of the blinding pain.  The touch both soothed and unsettled him.  "What gave that away?" he asked, voice taking on a newly playful tone.  Link broke eye contact and looked instead at the chest in front of him, allowing Rhett's hand to stay in his hair, warming his scalp.

"How did I do it?"

"Just remember. That's all you're here to do, right?" Rhett asked, a trill of something unsteady in his words.  Link shook his head, thoughts going distant and fuzzy, slipping through his fingers as Rhett's closed into a gentle fistful of his hair.

"I can't.  But _you_ know," he said, looking up again at green eyes that avoided him too easily.  "I can tell.  What happened to me?" he asked as softly as he could manage.  When Rhett didn't answer, he huffed a sigh, trying to slip out of his grip, but finding it too tightly embedded.  "Rhett, come on.  I need help, here.  Just tell me."

When Rhett's eyes lowered to his face again, they were frigid.  Link shivered and raised his hand over Rhett's trying to pull himself free and failing. 

"Rhett!  Come on, man.  Let go.  Just tell me what happened!" he finally shouted, writhing in a frightening hold that had begun to reignite the pain in his temple.  He swore and jerked as much as he could without moving any closer to the open drop beside them.  "Or isn't that the right question?" he spat, surprising himself with the venom in the words. 

"Oh, yeah," Rhett said distantly, nodding as he inhaled a drawn out breath.  "That's one of them."

Link could not believe how many details he caught in that moment.  He caught Rhett flash a glance toward the horizon before he heard his own vertebrae pop with the force of being thrown toward the cliff.  As the snow slipped out from under him, he saw Rhett turn back toward the door.  Link winced as his elbow hyper-extended, his hand reaching with a pent up desperation toward Rhett's arm, finding it unsurprisingly just out of reach.

He sensed the world roaring past him, but the descent moved much more quickly that the shove that caused it, blinding him to the landscape reaching out and tearing at his skin and clothes.  He tried to relax into the fall, having trained himself that tight muscles suffer worse injuries, but the control he'd once wielded had been wrenched from him.  A victim of gravity, he simply waited for the impact he knew was coming.  Predicting it didn't make the sound of bone cracking against wood any less terrifying. 

Alone at the base of a beautiful evergreen, Link knew he should be breathing.  As his chest burned with every weak inhalation, he chose instead to close his eyes and pray to the most fitting god he could recall.

But he only knew one name.

 

 

 

His body shot upright before his eyes even opened. 

"Oh, this is nice."  He could practically taste the sarcasm in Rhett's words.

When his eyelids peeled apart, Link had to squint into the brightness of the room, waiting several seconds for his sight to adjust.  With clarity came a quick and temporary sinking feeling.  It lifted the instant he heard Rhett's voice again.

"You really got creative with this one."

"What?" Link asked of the white room, fingertips digging into the plush sofa cushion on either side of his legs as he watched low flames flicker in the white brick fireplace.  He was glad to have made it back inside, but disheartened at the failure to escape.  Rhett stepped into his peripheral vision, an intimidating figure, larger than before, now that he wore all white. 

"This is ridiculous," he said, glancing over his shoulder.  "But not unflattering."

Link wanted to laugh at the sentiment, but the image stunned him into silence.  A white suit hugged the miles of Rhett's frame, curving smoothly around his ribs and softly squaring off his shoulders, illuminating his face as light bounced upward from it.  His presence was simultaneously inviting and domineering.

"You're..." Link shook his head and breathed a quiet laugh.  "Okay.  I hit my head while on a mountain."

"Yes."

"At Hawksnest.  I am...twenty?" Link guessed, shaking his head as he looked down at his own body.  He flinched at the unmistakable sight of blood creeping down the left side of his own white shirt.

Rhett laughed.  "Once upon a time, maybe."

"Okay. Yeah.  You don't look twenty-one." 

Rhett arched an eyebrow as he idly paced toward the fireplace, listening to Link work through his new memory. 

"You were there."

Rhett nodded, then reached for the fallen picture frame on the mantle.  As he turned it over in his hands, his brow furrowed.  Link shivered as he abandoned the memory for the present. 

"You're in white."

Rhett nodded again.  Link went quiet, touching his finger to the blood drying on his neck.  As recognition settled in, he felt the will to solve his personal mystery drain from his body.  It sank back into the sofa in a dizzying blend of terror and relief. 

"You're an angel," he sighed, still wanting to laugh at the idea.  Rhett shook his head.

"You're projecting."

Link's voice sounded distant, thoughts now coming slowly, moving like molasses through his lips.  "No, I don't think so.  That's been your job all along.  I'd never have guessed before, but it works in mysterious ways, right?  You're an angel." 

"Hmm.  Because I'm in white."

"Because I..."  Each word felt less necessary than the last.  Link felt no need to speak, so he simply stopped mid-thought, somehow knowing that his meaning would be understood.

Rhett sighed and moved toward him, stepping between his knees and sitting on the edge of the coffee table.  He resisted at first, but Link found that he could not help but look into Rhett's eyes.  They drew him in with an uncharacteristic expression of sympathy, of understanding and acceptance, of apology.  They stayed quiet, letting the room around them blur and fade away.  If there were answers behind Rhett's gaze, Link no longer wanted them.  He wanted only to float in the comfort of the connection.  In the face of all he had sought before, this suddenly seemed enough.  The warmth and security of Rhett's presence were nearly inspiring a smile.  He could feel it coming.

In his lap, Rhett still held the picture frame.  He breathed deeply and bit his lip before handing it over, wrapping Link's fingers around its edges.  The act was permitted, Link having grown passive, but he did not look at it.  He didn't care to see.  Instead, he stood, allowing his angel to mirror him in close proximity, and he let his mind wander freely, unabashedly considering closing the gap between his broken body and Rhett's.  In death, there was nothing to stop him.  So he did.

Link darted forward, crushing his lips against Rhett, who startled and stiffened at first, but soon relaxed into the contact.  This was no forbidden kiss given for laughs at a party, stolen in the back of a limousine, or hidden away in a hotel room.  It was open and welcome and washed through Link's veins as a cleansing breath, the first in years.  He glowed with it, sure that, if he was dead, this was his rebirth, his acceptance into heaven, the release of the shackles of mortality.  His lips lost contact as a result of the broad grin that had overtaken his face.  His left hand held the picture frame between their chests while his right stretched up and around Rhett's neck.  In return, long fingers slid around his back, mending the cracked and bruised ribs beneath their touch, coming to rest over his spine and helping him to stand a bit taller. 

When their lips came together again, Link shivered.  The sensation was beyond physical.  It brought into focus all that he had pretended not to want and handed it to him in the same instant.  He could not understand how he had been given Rhett here, but it did not matter.  Perhaps he had lived a long life, full of service and kindness.  Perhaps he had not died in the cold, bleeding and frightened in Rhett's arms.  Perhaps they had shared much more than thirty years, and now that they had been gifted eternity, Rhett would tell him all about it.  Even this did not matter.  Words too powerful to be ignored were being whispered, and he had to hear them.

"I'm sorry it took this..."

 _It's okay,_ he wanted to reply, buzzing in anticipation.

"I'm sorry I couldn't say it before," Rhett said, breath warm on Link's forehead.

 _It doesn't matter.  I couldn't, either_ , he thought, cheeks warming with the sweetest ache from smiling for too long.

"I can only hope that you've known all along.  I love you, Link.  I hope you don't think I'm a coward for waiting until now to tell you.  Because I do."

He laughed into Rhett's neck, shaking his head.  _Say it again._

"I love you."

Lips pressed into Link's cheek, the touch even warmer and more electric than before.  He leaned into it, turning his face to chase the kiss with his own mouth and whimpering when Rhett pulled out of reach. 

They looked again into each other's eyes, a small, sad smile on Rhett's face as he exhaled his own tension and with a single light touch, reminded Link of the photo in his hand.  Link closed his eyes as another long kiss was pressed into his forehead, deep and heavy, as if to give him strength.  It could never have worked. 

 

Nothing could have braced him for the sensation of having his heart torn from his chest as he cried so hard that his body could not produce a sound to adequately reflect its pain.  He shook violently, choking on goodbyes he hadn't had time to prepare, grappling with the urge to beg, to bargain, to scream, to die a hundred times over as his cold tears dropped upon the photo of himself on a beach surrounded by his smiling wife and three laughing children.

 


	8. Sentinels

 He knew what every machine was doing, what every beeping alarm signaled.  He knew the nurses and aides by name and the best time to visit the cafeteria (never, preferably.  Or just before noon, if necessary).  The building's layout was familiar enough that he could navigate it in an exhausted state of half-consciousness, which was lucky, since that's how he'd felt for days now.  He was chipper when he talked to staff members, no matter how much or little time they spent in the room.   He thanked everyone.  Things moved more slowly than he liked, but the one thing Rhett did not do was complain about the rate of progress.  He knew better than that.

He knew that Link would make fun of him if he could, so tightly he clung to his superstitions about hospitals.  Rhett would have let him; it would have changed nothing.  He would still take the care the doctors could offer and thank them for doing what they could, grateful for the steps toward recovery, no matter how small and stilted they felt.

And so he found himself heartlessly picking at a scone in the early morning hours, three days out from what they were cautiously calling 'the accident.'  The term had no implications of blame, no fingers to point, no unspoken accusations of the idiocy that had no doubt caused it.  Nobody liked to speak ill of the absent.  Especially when his body was in the same room.

 Rhett had already noticed that the daytime passed far more easily than the night's too-quiet, too-still hours.  He could be distracted by awful daytime television, thinking of all the jokes that Link would want to hear as soap operas and game shows vied for their attention.  He opened the blinds and let the sun warm the sterile room, trying to force his body to relax into the boxy, fold-out loveseat.  Life went on in the halls, visitors walking past their door on their way to more responsive loved ones.  Three times a day, a tall cart delivered meal trays to the rooms around theirs, returning an hour later to collect them.  But once the sun set, these little minutiae of life fell silent, and it became harder for Rhett to skirt the memory of Link coughing out blood, though he'd since learned that it had only come from Link's lip, where his canine had punctured it upon impact.   His mind drug him back to the sight of Link lying frightfully still as he bled into the snow, though he'd since learned that there was no sign that the injury should result in any paralysis.  He could not help but replay the sight and sound of Link's body connecting with an unforgiving fir, though he'd since learned that no bones had fully broken, just cracked in hairline fractures. 

Still, people had lost easier battles. 

 

The first twenty-four hours had been a blur.  He'd ridden with Link to the hospital, using an EMT's phone to call Jessie.  While he'd immediately forgotten the details of their conversation, he felt a tension in the pit of his stomach when he thought of it.  He didn't care about what he'd said, only who he'd opted to say it to. 

For a while, there was no time to think about it.  He had questions to answer of the hospital staff and a story to tell more times than he cared to.  But as the only witness, it proved vital that he recall the fall, the impact, and the words exchanged after.  That Link had been able to speak interested more than one nurse, and when he told the ER doctor, Rhett had to force himself not to interpret the nod it inspired as a clear signal that everything was going to be just fine.  As he would soon hear over and over again, there was no way to know for sure until Link could join the conversation for himself. 

Rhett had handled the frenzy of hospital admission well.  He was able to shut down his emotional responses in order to answer questions quickly and clearly, and when finally abandoned to the floor's waiting area, he could sit with himself and think objectively about what had to happen next.  Doing it alone was easy.  It was only as the sliding doors opened and a breeze of cool air blew in a wild-eyed blonde that his chest tightened and his streamlined thinking came grinding to a jumbled halt.

"Where is he?  What are they saying?"

It was the second time that she'd asked, he realized as her hand closed on his elbow.  He shook his head and attempted to blink away his fog.

"He's just down the hall.  Room 3110.  They won't let anyone in yet."

"That's ridiculous.  He's my husband.  I just want to tell him I'm here," Christy replied, already looking past his shoulder toward the nurses' station.  As she took off for it, he sighed. 

"He hasn't woken up.  Yet.  He will...he just hasn't."

She froze, taking a second to register the idea, before continuing on.  "I just want them to know I'm here."

As Rhett sat back down, he watched Christy find a nurse and ask all the questions he'd expected her to ask of him.  He settled back into an uncomfortable chair and tried to imagine the painful things that she could say to him when she returned.  He was ready for accusations of recklessness and immaturity.  He wanted to hear all of the criticism and apologize for not standing between Link and his self-destructive bravado, no matter how counterintuitive it felt to denigrate the trait that so endeared Link to those around him.  Rhett steeled himself for a barrage of well-earned rage.  But as she returned and found a place of her own to sit, he realized he had not been ready for the silence he got instead.

 

Thus began a quiet dance of two unwilling partners.  When told they could see Link, Christy and Rhett both stood up, locking eyes in a flash of instinctive possessiveness from which he quickly backed away.  This was a match he would never win; his reins had been handed over.  He picked and chewed at his fingernails for twenty minutes while waiting for Christy's permission to enter the room.  It arrived as she again sank heavily into one of the waiting room's the chairs beside him.

"It's about as you'd expect," she sighed, rubbing her face as he stood and moved toward the hallway. "I'll go get some coffee in a sec and be back in a minute."

Rhett's gut twisted as he stepped into the room for the first time, filling him with a flash of naive hope that just maybe a groggy pair of blue eyes would meet him as he turned the corner.  When they didn't, he swallowed hard and stepped carefully up to the bedside. 

White bandages wrapped around the upper half of Link's face, partially covering his left eye in an effort to protect the wound at his temple. An angry bruise had already begun spreading around his eye socket and down across his cheek.  Apart from the dark fingers of the bruise and a swollen bottom lip, the rest of his face was unmarred; Rhett couldn't help but feel stricken by its smooth and peaceful appearance. 

Plenty of monitors had been attached to Link's body, from the leads on his chest peeking out from the crisp gown to the small oximeter on his index finger, but with the ability to breathe on his own, he simply appeared to be sleeping.  Rhett's hand fell thoughtlessly over Link's wrist as he stared down at him, subtly shaking his head.

Words felt out of place, as if he'd be talking aloud to himself.  He shook away the thought of talking and grabbed the chair that Christy had left near the bed, sliding as close as possible to the mass of machinery, IV tubing, and stiff bedclothes that enveloped Link.  He swallowed thickly, noting the warmth that his touch left on Link's wrist and seeking solace in it.

He felt his throat tightening the longer he looked into Link's unresponsive face, so eventually, he leaned back and looked at his hands for a while, happy to just share the space, and stealing glances every other minute.

When Link's condition did not change for the remainder of the day, a schedule was arranged in which Christy could leave the hospital for a couple hours at a time to care for the rest of her family.  This, naturally, left Rhett to take the night watch, despite the cautious worry of his own wife: in two separate instances, Jessie had quietly voiced her fear that he would run himself ragged in his futile watch, and though she never said it aloud, he knew what lay at the heart of her concern.

It took a repetitive conversation of question and confirmation for Jessie to finally agree to take their sons back to North Carolina as planned.  It was easier to distract them with family and holiday celebrations, even if their father was not there with them.  She had never asked that he go along. She knew that he would plant himself in the hospital, alternating shifts with Christy, monitoring Link as he lie still, occasionally twitching a finger or knitting his brow, sucking the air from the room every time a synapse fired.  It took a full twenty-four hours for Rhett not to tense in anticipation at these little signs of life.  Only after another twenty-four did he finally feel compelled to speak to the body in the hospital bed.  He waited until Christy had gone home for the night, and the hallway beyond the heavy door had gone as quiet as it could get.  The words were hushed, and as he dared to touch Link's hand, they stumbled weakly from his lips.

"Hey, man.  I don't know if you can even hear me right now.  But, it's worth a shot, right?"

Before he could continue, the silence chilled him.  He tightened his grip on Link's hand, but remained quiet in an effort to avoid the ache that came with one-sided conversation.

 

* * *

 

 

From the driver's seat of her SUV, Christy leaned her head back and closed her eyes.  For the past two days, every other breath had been spent in prayer, in planning, or in delicately answering questions of curious young minds without stepping into the frightening realm of the hypothetical.  She had loved the busyness of her life, often referring to it as a blessed frenzy.  But running it on her own from a hotel room an hour and a half from home while traveling back and forth to an unfamiliar hospital had left her with double the chaos and none of the fun.  Her mother had flown in as quickly as possible and had helped to care for the kids, taking them back to their own home to the resume something distantly resembling a normal life.

Christy's heart ached for her husband and the children who wanted him back, but from the dark parking garage, she let herself feel the headache that had been growing at her temples.  With one hand wrapped around a warm paper coffee cup, she breathed through it, following it to its source.  Her attention traveled from her face to the tension in her neck, to the taut muscles of her shoulders and down her spine into the center of her chest.  She had expected fear or sadness; she was the master of "not mad, just disappointed."  But all she could grasp in this moment was anger, spinning in a tight ball, radiating its energy through the rest of her body.  She sat with this, clenching and relaxing her jaw as her eyes stared out into nothing. 

A drop of water landed on her wrist, causing her to flinch.  As she realized it came from her own eye, she shook her head, ending her period of self-indulgence and pushing open her door. 

The sun was still rising, trying to spread its golden light through the hospital's third floor and failing to penetrate a majority of the rooms' heavy curtains.  Christy tried to keep her eyes out of the rooms with open doors, but more often than not, found that she could help but glance.  One day, she would have to grapple with the question of whether she had hoped to spot people worse off than Link.  But for now, she was simply trying to avoid the apologetic glances from the few staff members who had started to recognize her. 

The hallway was covered in a thin carpet, muffling footsteps and gurneys as they crossed through, and unless a knock was offered, it allowed visitors to sneak into rooms unheard.  This was just the case as Christy quietly pushed open the door to room 3110 and froze. 

Rhett sat in the chair he'd anchored right next to the bed, his back sloping as he laid his head in the crook of his left arm on the edge of the mattress.  His face was directed at Link's, though his eyes had fallen closed.  His right hand held Link's left, and while the gesture alone did not surprise her, the fact that Rhett had woven their fingers together seemed to strike her with enough force to make her frown in confusion. 

She set her purse on the cabinet opposite the bed, and at the soft sound of its impact, Rhett started and raised his head, sighing at the pain that inevitably accompanied such a position.  He pulled his hands into his lap and sat back, taking a quick glance at Link before directing a feeble smile at Christy.

"Mornin'," he said groggily, picking up a half-eaten scone left on the rolling table near his chair.  "I brought you one, too.  It's on the counter.  Blueberry.  It's all they had."

"Cafeteria pastries?  You shouldn't have."

"Lobby Starbucks.  The good stuff," he said, rubbing his eyes. 

"They freed your face," she said to Link as she maneuvered around the IV tree.

"A nurse came in this morning to change the dressing and said he didn't need to be mummified.  That little band-aid is covering the only actual cut.  Progress!" Rhett announced, voice still quiet with sleep.  He looked at his hands as Christy kissed Link's smooth forehead. 

"You're going to love this bruise when you see it," she said, lightly brushing her fingertip over Link's cheek. 

From her periphery, she noticed that Rhett looked away both times that she spoke directly to Link, and she couldn't help but wonder if it made him feel intrusive.  Embracing her anger, she consciously decided not to care.  It was only a matter of time before he left, anyway. 

He gave up his chair and moved to the scratchy loveseat by the window.  Christy took his place, her back to him as she took Link's hand.  It still held Rhett's heat.

They sat in silence for a long while, and though her attention was focused on Link's healing face, she could feel Rhett sizing her up.  Eventually, she took a deep breath and turned to address him.

"Are you going to go rest?" she asked as nicely as possible.  If he saw through it, he didn't say so.  He just nodded and slowly pushed himself up.

"Okay.  Yeah," he sighed, stretching his arms over his head.  As he moved toward the door, he caught Christy's expression and turned.  "You okay?"

She dropped against the chair's stiff backrest and heard herself snort a humorless laugh.  As if watching from outside of her body, she could tell that whatever fires had started in her chest were about to escape her mouth.

"No, Rhett," she answered, shaking her head and biting her lip.  When she looked back up at him, her eyes were dark. "I'm not okay. I'm stuck in this cycle of thinking, 'You can't blame anyone for an accident.  These things happen, and they happen for a reason.'  But I can't hold onto those thoughts for very long right now.  Because this didn't have to happen.  This was avoidable.  If you guys had just come back with us, or if you'd just...I don't know.  If you'd just reminded him that he's not invincible.  You know how he gets.  We all know how he gets, and part of choosing to love him is reminding him that he's only human.  I just keep having to talk myself out of being so mad..."

Rhett leaned on the doorframe, letting her words validate the iron weight of guilt that had accompanied every glance at Link's face. 

"I know.  I'm supposed to be the one who prevents this.  I'm supposed to protect him, and I didn't."

As what little color that remained drained from his face, Christy felt her own anger turning inward, placing herself in its crosshairs.

"That's not fair either, though, is it?" she asked, dropping her head into her hands.  "He's an adult.  He's made this mistake once.  That's the worst part!"  As she voiced the idea, clarity struck.  "That's why I'm so mad.  He's already put everyone through this nightmare once.  Why couldn't he learn?  How hard of a lesson is _that_ to learn?  But that...that was nothing like this, was it?"

"He came back pretty quickly," Rhett confirmed, rolling his shoulders at the uncomfortable memory.

"So what if this time...I don't know.  I'm angry, and I'm embarrassed _for_ him.  What is _that_ about?  And so help me," she continued, embracing her rant for what it was and standing as Rhett came back into the room, "if either of you _ever_ suggest snowboarding again, I will take you _both_ out!" 

Rhett opened his arms, and as she stepped into them, she laughed at herself, breaking the dam for a torrent of quiet, body-wracking cries that Rhett allowed her to muffle in his chest. 

While she let the sorrow and confusion leave her body, even if only temporarily, Rhett tightened his encompassing grip on her, absorbing it all into his.


	9. The Hypothetical

 He had helped.  Rhett knew this.  He had allowed Christy to direct her very human frustrations at him, relieving her of the anger that had been gnawing at her.  As a result, she could better care for Link, more easily wait for his return.  Her face had brightened notably by the time he was closing the door behind him.  He let this sense of minor accomplishment carry him to his car, down the highway, to his own hotel room, and into the bathroom.  It was only once the small space had filled with steam and he stood in the safety of the shower, too-hot water stinging his skin, that he loosened his armor and let himself breathe a deep and pained breath.  It released as something not unlike a sob, but without the ability to discern tears in the spray of the shower, there was no way to be sure.  So he told himself.

 

* * *

 

"Fear looks a little different on everyone."  Lying back on the bed, Rhett draped his arm over his eyes and listened to Jessie's soothing voice.  He angled his face toward the phone propped on the pillow next to his head and sighed. 

"I know.  I'm glad she got it out.  She felt better, I think, just saying it."

"And how many times have you said it?  How many times have you blamed yourself?" Jessie asked, remaining quietly patient in the silence that followed.  It was one of many, this conversation loping over quiet lulls and bursts of information, moving in circles and tangents that spoke to Rhett's state of mind. 

She let him process for a long while before closing off the question.  "I just don't want you beating yourself up.  It doesn't help.  There was nothing you could do, babe."

"I know."  His clipped tone said that he didn't.

"Well, I'm going to keep reminding you until I believe that.  He's healing, though.  And I bet..." she ventured, seemingly sensing the talk drawing to a close.  "I bet he's ready to listen to you.  I just have a feeling."

Rhett quickly questioned his confession.  It was one of the first things he'd said when he called, admitting that, despite their decades of friendship, he suddenly couldn't bear the thought of talking to Link, not when he knew he wouldn't get a response.  She had sympathized, understanding his desire to hear some off-the-wall comebacks after growing so accustomed to them.  But now it seemed that she had just been waiting to encourage him to talk anyway.

"He's in there, somewhere.  I'm sure he'd love to hear from you.  You'll feel better, too, I bet.  Just gotta try."

Rhett chewed his lip.  "Okay."

The call ended shortly after, leaving Rhett alone with his thoughts, which had started to circle around the nagging feeling of shame that even this talk could not help him shake. 

But the longer he stared up at the ceiling, the easier it became to recognize what had actually bothered him.  It was not the guilt of letting Link get hurt; it was the guilt of being caught. 

When Christy had entered the hospital room, she'd caught the end of an odd night.  He'd begun his shift watching two Lifetime movies from the recliner near the head of the bed.  As the room had darkened with the setting sun, though, the familiar loneliness crept in, and he'd found himself moving to the smaller chair in order to see Link's face whenever he wanted.  He sat on Link's right, allowing the best view of the features unobstructed by gauze wrappings. 

At some point, he'd shut off the television and plugged his phone into the small, tinny radio on the countertop beneath it.  Most of the songs from the quiet indie playlist went ignored, simply serving to fill too-quiet air.

But one particular number had caught Rhett's attention, and as he listened to a mixed duet sing of finding home in each other's presence, he felt the urge to reach for Link.  He went first for the forearm, then slid his hand down to interlock their fingers, pressing their palms together as he watched Link's face through increasingly bleary eyes.

_Home, yes I am home! Home is wherever I'm with you!_

Even now, Rhett could not deny that the act had felt satisfying.  Without fear of reproach, of questions (from onlookers; from Link; from himself), without the fear of Link cringing away or making light of it, Rhett could simply take in the sight of him.  He could appreciate the color and geometry of his face, lingering for a while on the contrast of dark hair against light skin before visually tracing the angles of his brow, his cheekbones, his jaw, and resting at the curve of his lips.  Rhett flinched upon recognizing his own focal point, and exhaled a quiet laugh at himself as he slid his attention up to Link's eyes, half-heartedly willing them, daring them, to open.  He wondered idly how he'd react if they did.  In the moment, he'd thought he might cry.  He might fly from his chair to embrace Link around the shoulders, to pull him close and let him squirm and protest; it would be in vain because Rhett knew he would not let him go, if given the chance, for a long while.

But wake he did not, so Rhett settled for resting his head on his arm and watching Link breathe.

Nurses and technicians had come in and out through the night, and Rhett never stirred.  Only when one actually spoke, explaining the plan to change Link's bandages, did he push himself up and leave Link's side to retrieve a coffee and scone for himself.  He'd bought one for Christy, too, even knowing that she would eat breakfast before arriving. 

As he looked back, he thought the gesture was an apology, though he hadn't yet known what for.

What he did know was that he needed to sleep.  His fitful, restless naps would not be enough to keep him going much longer, and in the spirit of self-pity to which he so rarely surrendered, he ordered a bottle of pinot noir to his room to help him relax. 

The wine worked through his blood as he watched late morning news, the same stories making headlines on every network.  At the bottom of his third glass, he found his will to listen to all that was wrong in the world waning.  As one hand shut off the TV, the other reached for his phone, returning to his playlist and letting it play through a new set of earbuds.  Before dropping the phone back onto the bed, Rhett took a deep breath and opened its photo gallery.  He scrolled through dozens of thumbnails before finding what he wanted: a close-cropped shot of Link looking directly into the camera.  Just out of frame, his fingers were wrapped tightly around a beer bottle, the fourth of the night.  This was what had inspired his comedic gravity as he posed for the shot, chin dipped just enough that his eyes had to look up to meet the lens.  His mouth was an impressively flat line, but his cheeks and eyes gave away the smile he'd fought back for the picture.  The second it was snapped, Rhett recalled, Link had broken into a fit of laughter that he couldn't explain.  It died and was reborn for the remainder of the evening, spreading to anyone who heard it. 

If asked, Rhett would explain that he'd pulled up the picture as a reminder of the fun that Link injected into whatever room he entered.  Outwardly, Rhett would have rolled his eyes at the mention of ten other photos of Link _actually_ looking funny that he could have chosen.  He would scoff at the suggestion that he'd been staring at this one because Link looked serious.  Because Link, whether he'd known it or not, was smoldering.  Because Link looked warm and dangerous and even a bit sexy, and Rhett had caught it for himself.  And he was not indifferent to it.

If asked, of course, he would admit to none of these opinions, especially not with Link unable to dismiss them as ridiculous for himself.  But no one was asking, so Rhett chalked up his spiraling state of mind to exhaustion both mental and physical, and indulged in one last transgression, vowing to pick himself up and put himself back together right after.

He downed the last of the wine straight from the bottle and re-corked it before rolling it toward the trashcan by the desk.  His hand slapped twice toward the switch at the base of the bedside lamp before it cut off, shrouding the room in darkness, save for the thin cracks of light threatening the edges of the blackout curtains.  As he lowered to his back, stretching flat on the bed, he pulled the earbuds out and tugged his shirt up over his head, tossing it toward the room's one chair before replacing the headphones and turning up the music.

Rhett's hands felt cool against his own abdomen, so they rested atop his stomach for a moment, heating up as he bit gently at the inside of his cheek.  Before long, though, they moved, sliding down to the waist of his sweatpants.  He pulled at the elastic with his left while his right dipped beneath, falling to rest in a place of incomparable comfort.  He wasn't ready to move, so he didn't; he just enjoyed the weight and warmth of his hand.  As he breathed deeply through his nose, his body started to respond, and his blood carried a private promise through his veins.  His pulse sharpened and dulled his senses in a soothing pattern, his attention straying for a few seconds at a time until returning to the fingers now closing more tightly around himself. 

Quickly growing frustrated with his confinement, Rhett pushed, pulled, and kicked himself out of his cotton pants, sighing as his knees fell open in the dark.  His left palm reached down to cup what his right could not stroke just as an unfamiliar song came into his ears.  A catchy refrain paired with an electric guitar, perking him up even more as he found himself rolling his hips into his palm.  Normally, he'd never mind details as minute as lyrics in a moment like this, but they seemed to cut through his concentration, carried by a sinful beat at which he couldn't help but grin.

_I'm a bad, bad man.  Don't you understand?_

_I'm a bad, bad man.  Best you turned and ran..._

His brain took the message and ran, conjuring images that both unsettled and electrified him.  Where he first sought out memories of his wife, he wound up in fantasies of being touched by much larger hands, watched by lighter eyes, bitten by sharper teeth.  He hardly fought it, weakened by this venture into hedonistic territory, and let his eyelids squeeze closed, trapping his visions of Link behind them.  Rhett marveled at the prospect of feeling Link pour himself over his long body, covering as much of him as possible.  Fingernails that he pretended were not his own scratched down his chest as his vision of Link pushed himself up, straddling his waist as he leaned back onto his hand, exposing the taut length of his body from neck to navel. 

Rhett could see his fingers closing on Link's waist, imagine the skin giving to his grip, predict just how long it would take for Link to slide off of him and roll onto his back (not terribly long), welcoming the graze of his length as he pulled Rhett's hips close (terribly close), rocking up against him with the most wicked smile on his face.  He could hear the sighs, feel the air pushed from Link's lungs as it warmed his neck before lean arms wrapped around his shoulders in its place.  Strong fingers would find a home in his hair, he knew, so he let his left hand do as much while his right worked him furiously close to an edge that only a single image could carry him over. 

He panted, sucking in air in a futile attempt to cool his burning muscles.  But as it tended to do, the wine betrayed him, grabbing him by his conscience and forcing him, if only for a second, to consider the implications of his actions.  It was one thing to use Link's image for such a purpose.  It was odd but human and dismissed to loneliness easily enough.  But to explain why he slowed down, held back every time he approached climax, to justify lingering in his own private darkness for the half hour that had passed so frightfully quickly was much more difficult.  It whispered of more than benign curiosity, and what it had to say chilled him to the core.  So he pushed it aside, knowing the consequence of doing so, and dove headfirst into the image that he knew would take him where he wanted to go.

From the safety of his mind's eye, Rhett watched his hand close in Link's hair, their faces inches apart as they'd woven into each other.  Link's eyes had lost focus and drifted closed as filthy groans rolled out of him, growing louder by the second until they silenced altogether as his lip curled, baring his teeth while he writhed in pleasure beneath Rhett, who held this image, pulled it close and locked it away as he choked through his own climax, reeling from the intensity of it, letting his toes curl as his back arched off the bed. 

Reality seeped back in with a merciful slowness, but it seeped back in all the same.  Soon enough, Rhett was staring up into a nearly blackened room, cooling in his own sweat and swallowing hard against another torrent of tears.  He held it back, but curled up onto his side anyway, letting his logic struggle for purchase on what had just happened.  The process was painful, made doubly so by his effort to stave it off in the act.  Working backward through pleasure that so quickly brought him shame, his thoughts circled around the notion that he was merely acting out this wild vision as a coping mechanism.  He decided as his teeth scraped the backs of his knuckles that this was simply a twisted way of holding tight to a hope that Link would be back soon.  He repeated the thought to himself like a mantra.

But as he sank into a deep and welcome sleep, a flicker of a feeling continued to threaten him with far more frightening theories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As it always does, music coaxed this out. Check out "Bad Lieutenant" by The Sheepdogs (referenced in this chapter) and "Glory" by Jamie N Commons, if you're so inclined. Talk about mood music.


	10. Clean

Rhett hurt when he awoke, which, he thought as he stumbled out of bed, seemed fair.  In the fluorescent light of the bathroom, he looked fittingly worn, eyes lined with dark circles, bloodshot and dry.  His lips were on the verge of cracking from dehydration, and they stung as they pulled into a hopeless smile.  The suggestion only whispered by his subconscious six hours before was now painted in wild, unflattering colors all over his face. 

He was now entering the fourth day of feeling unanchored.  That his family had left him for this week (a decision he wholeheartedly stood behind) had perhaps intensified the drifting sensation, but even with them by his side, Rhett imagined, he would not feel fully present.  His focus had suffered, phone calls from friends and staff going unacceptably unanswered.  There were too many conversations he was not ready to have.  He wanted Link to speak for himself, so he waited.  In the meantime, he moved through his routine like a ghost of himself, waiting for life to be breathed back into him by the opening of bright blue eyes.

And all of this listlessness, this inability to consider a future without Link, however near and however temporary, stemmed not solely from the potential loss of a lifelong partnership.  That much was clear now.  Link had wrapped himself in wisps and tendrils around the deepest roots of Rhett's heart.  For thirty years, he had sewn himself to Rhett's side, championing him on when others could not share their vision, making him laugh when others could not penetrate his mood swings, and rooting him in reality when others too easily to let his imagination get away from him. 

And get away from him it had, only a few hours earlier.  But that was the problem; to consider Link in such positions, to imagine having him so incredibly close and open and keyed up had felt less like an invasive thought and more like a logical turn of events.  It hadn't resulting in laughing at himself; it had been too satisfying.

So there he stood, staring into a reflection both hollow and brimming with a private, willfully naive excitement.  In a sick and amusing sort of way, it felt good to have something to feel so bad about.

 

Christy was curled up in the recliner when Rhett pushed the door open.  The television played an old western, something that Link would never have had the attention span to watch.  It would have seemed like punishment to him.  The thought made Rhett smirk.

"How's it going?" Rhett asked quietly.  She rubbed her eyes and sat forward, nodding her tired head toward the wheeled bedside table, directing his attention to a plastic basin, a yellow razor, and a miniature can of shaving cream, all untouched.  It was a strange answer to his greeting, but he went with it, acknowledging the dark shadow having taken over the lower half of Link's face.

"I guess it's gotten a little longer than he likes," Rhett said, straining for a casual tone as he shook off his jacket. 

"I asked a nurse for it today.  And I..." she lost her voice to a quiet laugh and ran a hand through her hair.  "I realized I wasn't comfortable doing it."

"They didn't offer?"

"They did.  I said no.  I said I'd like to do it.  And I can't."

Rhett's eyes narrowed in an attempt to read her, then flitted away lest she try to do the same.

"I just don't...I've never actually done it before, you know," she said, shrugging before pulling her legs up into the chair with her, shrinking into herself at voicing her vulnerability.  Rhett cleared his throat. 

"It's alright.  Not like he's on blood thinners. They'd never have trusted us with this if he was."  The joke fell flat; he swallowed hard and dropped onto the built-in bench across from the foot of the bed.  "I'll do it.  It will make him feel better.  And we'll all feel better looking at him if we can actually recognize him, right?"

"I think so.  Maybe it'll be worse.  Only one way to know," she sighed.  Only a minute passed before she leaned out of the chair and reached for her belongings.  Despite their understanding that morning, she seemed uninterested in lingering in the room with Rhett.

"What's for dinner?" he asked, trying to lighten the atmosphere. 

"Momma's fried chicken.  She started putting it together this morning, so I'd better not be late."  She turned toward the door, tossing a glance in his direction.  He caught her shoulders straighten from the corner of his eye and flinched under her scrutiny. 

"Ma'am?"

"Rhett...you look like hell."

He laughed, so she did too. 

"I'm sorry, but...I mean, did you sleep at all?  You don't have to stay here all night, you know."  As soon as she uttered the words, she bit her lip, instantly revealing her opinion of leaving Link alone.

"I'm fine, sister.  Don't you worry about me.  Go home, give your crew a hug from me, huh?"

She sighed through her nod and extended her arms in a surprising offer of a hug.  He stood and stooped into it, letting her pull him tight.

"You have to sleep.  I need you on my team, here," she said into his shoulder.  If she felt him wince, she said nothing of it.

 

An hour passed after Christy had left, during which Rhett had spiraled through a series of music videos on his phone, grateful for the colorful distraction after Christy's parting words.  He had all but ignored Link peacefully breathing in front of him, but with a lingering glance at the hospital bed, Jessie's words came back to him: _he'd love to hear from you_.

He extended his hand, hovering an inch above Link's and suddenly hesitant to make contact.  His eyes were glued to Link's face as it lowered, his palm connecting lightly, then with its full weight upon the back of Link's cool hand. 

"Hey," he tested, clearing his throat and glancing toward the door to confirm their isolation. 

"Link, buddy.  You in there?  It's time to wake up."

He sighed and let his thumb stroke Link's wrist. 

"You're okay, you know.  You've been poked and prodded and scanned like crazy, and you're going to be fine.  So what gives?"

As he spoke, a tension he didn't know he carried began to ease. 

"I gotta say, it feels like you're just being contrary."  He exhaled a deep breath and leaned forward.  "But that's okay.  You be as contrary as you want.  You just have to promise to come back."  He found that his voice had started to waver and stopped, dropping back to slouch into the recliner.  "This is as fun as I thought it'd be," he grumbled, wiping his eyes before there was anything to dry.  "Okay.  What do you want to hear?  Want me to tell you story?  How about one from college."  He looked again toward the door and moved his chair closer to the head of the bed, tightening his hold on Link's hand just slightly. 

"Remember when we were in senior year...no, junior year, I think.  It was later, when we had the apartment.  And we went to that house party at Kimball's.  You got torn up on jungle juice.  So, no, you probably _don't_ remember this one.  You slid down the banister at least twice, and you..." Rhett stopped to laugh, closing his eyes to enjoy the rare feeling.  "You were trying to give lessons on how to do it.  You were so proud of yourself.  And those games.  Oh, man. We took on these girls from the sorority down the block, and I don't even remember what we were trying to do, beer pong I think, but we lost horribly, and they wanted us..."  His eyes went distant with the memory, his thumb still sliding back and forth against Link's skin.  And then a finger twitched under his palm.  Despite himself, Rhett whipped his head up to look at Link's face. 

It did not move.  He smiled to himself and pulled his hand away to cross his arms, subconsciously bracing himself for what he was about to say.

"You know, I almost wish we had.  We could have survived a couple minutes of mouth-to-mouth. We should have gone through with it.  It would have been worth it, just to see the looks on their faces.  And maybe the one on yours..."  He shook his head and chewed his lip.  "But then again, maybe we couldn't have handled it.  Maybe you were smarter then than I am now.  Maybe that's why you hid from me for the rest of the night on the stairs.  I knew where you were the whole time, by the way.  But maybe you knew that, too.  Or...maybe you were just waiting for me to come find you.  And maybe I should have..."

He held his breath, watching Link's face in fear and anticipation of any signal that the words had made contact.  In the face of the cold quiet that answered him, Rhett laughed at himself. 

"Okay.  That's out there.  There's part of it, anyway," he sighed, shaking his head and pushing himself up.  "Let's quit while we're ahead, here."

He picked up the plastic basin, walked into the bathroom, and grabbed a stark white hand towel, soaking it in hot water in the sink while he looked into his own reflection, surprised to see fewer lines around his eyes than the morning before.  He had been visibly granted a taste of relief, and as he filled the basin with hot water, he found himself craving just a little more.

Rhett rolled the overbed table up to Link's stomach and wrung the water out of the towel.  With it softly steaming in his fingers, he stood over Link and took a deep breath to soothe his nerves.  With more care than he'd use in any other circumstance, he draped the towel over Link's mouth, nestling it delicately against his cheeks and under his jaw, hardly daring to look away from clearing at his nose. 

"This is probably a little more luxury than you're used to, but I'm sure this razor will make up for that."

As the damp heat softened Link's beard, Rhett scratched his own.  As soon as he did, he turned and pumped a palm-full of sanitizer from the dispenser on the wall, shaking his hands to dry while shifting his weight from foot to foot.  Then, realizing the disadvantage of his height, he rolled the room's backless stool away from the computer and over to Link's left side, where he would start.  Then he sanitized his hands again.

From his place on the stool, Rhett removed the towel and grabbed the gel.  He pumped it into his right hand, and with another deep breath, softly wrapped the fingers of his left around the base of Link's jaw to hold his head still.  His brow furrowed in concentration as he gently rubbed the gel in circles over Link's face, subconsciously memorizing the bones of his cheeks and angles of his chin.  When the cream crossed onto Link's mouth, Rhett moved slowly, clearing it off with his fingertips, his gaze flickering up twice toward closed eyes.

"Here we go, then," he whispered, cleaning off his hand with the towel and popping the protective cover from the razor's blade. 

He found the faint disconnect between Link's beard and his sideburns and started there with a smooth swipe downward.  He made every pass thereafter just as carefully, pausing only briefly to clean the blade and double check his work.  The room was quiet enough that he could hear the scrape of the steel as it carved through the thick hair obscuring a face he was growing increasingly more excited to see.  Even his breathing was silent, each inhale only taken once the blade had been lifted. 

He did not want to enjoy it; he did not want to think of having to do it again while Link lay unnaturally still and quiet.  Rhett tried to reject the pleasure he felt in performing what he quickly realized was such an intimate service for his friend.  But as he steadfastly drug the razor over the partial mustache that remained, necessarily grazing the peaks and valleys of Link's lips, he could not help but feel an undercurrent of gratitude that Christy could not bring herself to do this.  He understood her hesitance: the act was an unspoken admission of Link's absence, one more thing that he could not do for himself.  But understanding the notion did not mean agreeing with it.  Rhett found that he had turned the act into a ritual of rebirth, bringing back the face of the man they loved as a first step in bringing back the spirit to which it belonged.  And as he wiped the last of the foam of off Link's newly smooth face, Rhett realized that he would gladly take that first step as many times as necessary for Link to return.

The crease in his brow smoothed as Rhett pressed a cool washcloth to Link's neck, allowing his free fingers to brush softly over his brow, across his cheekbones.  The anxiety over touching his face had not only passed, but had been replaced with a new and irrepressible desire to do so.  He knew that he was crossing a line; his long look toward the doorway told him as much.  But still, Rhett dropped the cloth on the tabletop and leaned his chest over the bedrail to press his forehead against Link's temple.  His fingertips traced feather-light over a smooth jaw, returning to their place at soft lips, relishing in every warm breath that ghosted over them, floated up his arm, and burrowed into his chest.

"This is okay, right?" he whispered over a growing lump in his throat.  "You'll forgive me for...you'll forgive me?"

He edged forward carefully, dissolving the space between his lips and Link's cool cheek.  He momentarily pulled back, checking Link's face for a non-existent reaction.  And in gazing at the softened features of his best friend's face, he couldn't help himself. 

His lips aligned with Link's perfectly.  This did not surprise him.   What surprised him was that he could not immediately pull away, that even against a chilling stillness he wanted to remain, connected to Link in this confirmation of all he could not say.  The kiss felt warm and dry and more comfortable in its one-sidedness than he ever could have expected. 

Rhett stayed, his fingertips stretching into the short hair above Link's ear, his breath warming skin not his own, fueled by an undercurrent of wordless prayer and an embarrassing momentary belief in fairytales.  When his body finally cried for oxygen, Rhett pulled away, hands slipping slowly from Link's face, eyes welling with a nauseating mixture of guilt and disappointment in the realization that he was no Prince Charming.

Yet while Link still slept, Rhett leaned back into his chair, grinning at the inevitability of what had awakened inside of him.


	11. Choice

He was drained.  His eyes burned, having cried themselves dry.  His stomach was sore from the convulsions of sobbing for a loss he'd only just learned he'd suffered.  Ignorance had been frustrating, but in the darkest depths of his mind, Link knew that he'd preferred it, even as he held the picture of his family so tightly that the frame cut into his fingers.  His hands had the only muscles he bothered to control; the rest had given up on him, sending him to the floor in an angular heap.  The cold of the marble had seeped into his blood, but his body couldn't be bothered to shiver.

It felt as if hours had passed.  The sun had set over the mountains outside, and the room was dim, lit only by the fireplace that crackled beneath the mantle.  He couldn't see it from his place on the floor.  He could only see the back of the couch on which Rhett had perched, waiting patiently for any change of scenery.  Link hadn't had much to offer.

Once the last tear had fallen, he lay unsettlingly still, willing his bones to become one with the marble beneath him while simultaneously trying to remember the moment of his own death.  He was paralyzed by the notion that his children had had to see his mangled body, had been forced decades too soon to go about life without him, before he could teach them all that he'd hoped for them to learn.  He ached at the thought of his wife having to face tying up the innumerable loose ends he'd inevitably left behind.  His parents would never recover, not fully, not with seeing his face so clearly in the children that had lost him.  The only person he did not worry about was the one sitting only a few feet away, not speaking nor consoling.  Just waiting.

When Link finally decided he wanted to speak, it took another lifetime for his voice to cooperate.  The sound came from deep in his lungs, but had to fight so hard to escape that it came out in only a dry whisper.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"What's that?" Rhett replied, tilting his head, then stiffening at the dark look he received from red-rimmed eyes.

"You knew.  And you let me run around thinking I was going to...And you told me that you love me...And what am I supposed to do with that now?  Huh?"

Rhett's lips turned up in a muted smile, sympathetic to Link's progression from sorrow to anger.  In his newfound state of helplessness, anger made sense.

"Whatever you want.  Nothing at all, if that sounds best."

Link's eyes fell closed as his head dropped back down to the floor.  On one hand, he felt childish in his rage.  He sensed that Rhett, this Rhett, whatever this Rhett was, meant him no harm, and yet he couldn't help but take his very presence as an offense.  In the face of all he'd lost, Rhett's company was a cruel cosmic joke.  And yet lying on the floor was an acceptance of helplessness that felt entirely out of character.  On the other hand, he felt flayed open, vulnerable and exhausted at this, the end of a twisting journey to a cold realization.  So he stayed down there a while longer, breathing deeply through his nose.  In one shaky inhalation, he wondered what he might have done to deserve this kind of afterlife.  In the next, he struggled to defend his entitlement to anything better.  All the while, the gaze of warm green eyes covered him over like a most ineffective blanket.

"I didn't get to say goodbye.  There's so much I didn't get to say." 

The words sounded thin and weak.  Still, they moved Rhett to push himself forward, grunting and sighing as he lay down beside Link.  When he reached for the picture frame, he found Link's grip unbreakable, so he settled for resting his fingers over Link's. 

"Alright.  What would you have said?"

Link sighed, shaking his head rolling onto his back, letting Rhett's hand fall away. 

"I'd have told them...I don't know.  I'd have told them how happy they made me.  How proud I am of them.  I'd ask them to forgive me for being—"

"No," Rhett interrupted, laying his hand over Link's arm.  "Don't.  You can't ask them to forgive you for being yourself.  You didn't do anything wrong.  You were having fun, and there was an accident.  You are not reckless.  You are...potential energy incarnate.  You light up everything you touch.  For that, you can't ask forgiveness.  You'll never get it.  So.  Try something else."

Link shook his head at the futility of it all.  "There's too much." As he stared up at the shadows of the furniture flickering on the ceiling, another heavy realization settled into him, threatening his composure all over again.

"You," he whispered.  Rhett did not respond, so he attempted the question more clearly.  "You're not...you're not dead, are you?"

Rhett pushed himself up and crossed his legs in front of him, giving the question great thought before answering.  At his silence, Link tore his gaze from the ceiling, shakily resettling it on the face beside him. 

"Well," Rhett started, sighing before finally meeting Link's eyes, "no.  I'm not dead."

Link choked back a whimper and broke the eye contact. 

"Is that what you wanted to hear?"

"I don't know," he answered quietly.  "Yes.  Of course that's what I wanted to hear.  I want you to be okay, but," he whispered, voice thick with a sob that he couldn't hold back much longer.  The impending tears frustrated him at this point, so he rolled his eyes and sighed at his lack of composure.  "I'm glad you're okay.  I just don't want to leave you." 

He held together just long enough for Rhett to pull at him, guiding him firmly into his lap.  Link pulled his arms tight to his chest, and buried his face in the crook of Rhett's neck.  Rhett said nothing of the tears falling at his collar, and instead, squeezed tightly around Link's ribs, holding him as closely as possible.

"Sshh...I'm here.  I'm with you.  Don't worry about me."

"You're not here.  I don't know...I don't know what you are, but I know that you can't be real."

"Don't say that.  I'm right here.  You can hear me.  You can feel me.  I'm here, Link," Rhett persisted, pulling loose one of Link's balled fists and interlacing their fingers.  "I've got you.  I'm here."

His skepticism did not extend to his hands, so even as he clung to Rhett, Link whispered, "How?"

"I can't explain it," Rhett sighed, punctuating the admission with a kiss to the top of Link's head.  He finished his thought with his lips buried in dark, mussed hair.  "Maybe it isn't for me to explain." 

With Link's next question, he felt Rhett weaken beneath him.  It was the first and only time that he'd sensed genuine vulnerability in this version of his closest friend.  It shook him further, but he did not regret asking it.

"Why does this hurt so bad?"  The implication was clear: _nothing was supposed to hurt anymore_.

After two false starts, Rhett finally shook his head and answered with a hushed question of his own. 

"Would you believe me if I told you that was a good thing?"

"Not at all."

Rhett couldn't hold back an airy laugh, though it seemed to ease the ache in Link's stomach.

"That's fair."

Link could not have said how long he sat in between Rhett's knees, head resting on his chest.  Hours or days could have passed with Rhett's rhythmic grazing of his back, fingertips dragging from his waist to his shoulders, sowing comfort where he could and wordlessly encouraging it to grow into acceptance.  Link still felt as if a layer of ice had crystallized over his insides, but in Rhett's arms he'd tasted warmth. Eventually, the small spasms in his chest subsided, dissolving away and taking some of the pain with them.  

"This place is still yours, you know," Rhett ventured, unlacing their fingers to press their palms more closely together.  Link stared blankly at their hands, pliable and empty, grunting a heartless response.  Rhett lowered his cheek onto the top of Link's head and watched their hands shift into a comfortable hold, mimicking a dance.

"You don't _have_ to hurt.  You can, but you don't _have to_.  You can still love them, and you can miss them.  But you can also feel good."

Link shook his head lethargically.

"Yes.  Really.  Think about it.  You know they love you, and they miss you.  But do you think they're going to be okay?  Better than okay?  Don't you think they'd still have fulfilling lives and carry you with them as they grow up into strong, happy adults?  Don't you think she'll make sure of that?  Don't you think everyone will?"

At this, he nodded, eyes closing at the thought.

"Then let that be enough.  You can't help them from here.  But you can choose to be okay with that.  You can choose to let go and be okay with it."

The concept frightened Link, though he did not show it.  Instead, he remained still, face pressed into Rhett's white sweater. 

"Don't you think they'd want that for you?" Rhett finally asked after a long moment of thoughtful quietude.  When Link did not reply, he added quietly, "I do."

He could not appear any weaker, so Link had no trouble admitting what troubled him, though he still did not look up at Rhett to do so. 

"I don't know how."

"Just...just stop thinking about it.  You don't have to worry about that life anymore.  You have this now.  You have...you have me.  Try thinking about that."

Link scoffed at how easy Rhett made it sound, but after a deep breath, he tried it anyway.  He released his iron grip on all he could not have, and with it, his hold on the picture frame.  It slipped out of his arm and tumbled onto the floor. 

As young as his grief had been, Link had grown used to it.  It stung and bit at him, but he had carved out a space for it, giving it a home from which he'd not expected it to depart so easily.  He'd thought that this was what death was, an anvil in his chest pressing him down into a cold floor while he fought for unnecessary breath.  It hadn't always been that way, though.  For a few precious moments, he'd felt warmth and peace, a contentment close but somehow unlike anything he'd known before.  It didn't seem impossible that he should feel it again.

But without his ache, he felt dangerously light.  So he slid his newly free hand up around Rhett's neck and held tight, pressing their chests together.  His plea was faint, uttered into a thick shirt.

"Help me," his voice said, as the grip of his fingers on Rhett's neck whispered, _Don't let me slip away,_ and the shifting of his hips begged, _Tie me to you._  

In the waking world, Link would have mocked the cliché, overdone and unbelievable even the best movies.  He knew deep down that no one truly moved so easily from crying to kissing.  And yet, when Rhett tilted his chin upward and pressed their lips together, he felt an open wound covering over.  It may not have been believable, but nothing had to be anymore. 

The remaining traces of pain had dissolved, wiped away frightfully easily by this gesture into which Link had fully bought.  He leaned closer into Rhett, letting traces of warmth from the much larger body radiate through him and wash him clean.  Of the tempest that had crashed from his head to his heart, all that remained were images of Rhett, laughing, dancing, driving, sleeping, writing, listening to music, smiling at Link, always at and with and for Link.  And when finally he opened his eyes, Rhett was looking down at him with a knowing grin.  His face felt like home.

"There you are," he said, cheeks rounding with his smile.  Link couldn't help but smile back.

"Here I am.  Here we are."

Rhett sighed and pressed their foreheads together for a moment before chuckling lowly and clicking his tongue.

"Alright.  Get up.  Let's go."

Link sat up straight, furrowing his brow until Rhett started to nudge him out of his lap.  Lazily pushing himself up off the floor, Link asked, "Where we goin'?"

"I guess you'll know when we get there," Rhett answered, standing himself up and grabbing Link's hand.  A genuine laugh escaped Link as he let himself be pulled to the door opposite the fireplace.  He glanced at the mantle and found that the full collection of picture frames had fallen face down.  He did not care.

His attention was captured by the coolness of the room into which Rhett had pulled him.  In crossing the threshold, he'd lost the hot fireplace and gained a large, familiar bed.   

"Back to the beginning," he muttered, allowing himself to be thrown into the middle of it, the mattress immediately conforming to the shape of his body.  As Rhett climbed over him, lit solely by the cool moonlight coming in through sheer white curtains, he shook his head. 

"No beginning.  There is no 'there' or 'then.'  There is here and now and you and me and that's all we get.  That's all we need."

The words carried an edge to them that Link had to consciously ignore, but once he'd let them in, they relaxed him, coercing his hands to raise to either side of Rhett's face as he nodded his assent.

"Okay.  You and me.  Here and now."

Rhett lowered into a heavy kiss, dropping the entire length of his body against Link, pressing him into the plush covers with a sigh.  Link started at the graze of Rhett's tongue along his lower lip, then met it with his own, shivering at the deep, gruff sound he earned in doing so.  His fingertips drug backward across Rhett's scalp, and he couldn't help but smirk when Rhett shivered.  In retaliation, he pushed his pelvis further into Link's, causing him to first gasp, then groan, then laugh.

His lightness had not left, but Link had started to embrace the feeling of weightlessness because Rhett clearly sensed it, too, and seemed bent on ensuring that he did not slip away.  And like this, Link did not mind being held down.

Where there might have been a reel of doubts and questions, there was only a loop of confirmations, of _yes to this, of course this.  More of this._ But even that grew faint when Rhett's lips pressed into and up the side of his neck.  As teeth closed gently on his earlobe, Link let his hips roll upward, suddenly desperate for more meaningful contact.  Rhett laughed darkly, and his stomach flipped.

After feeling so detached from his senses, Link reveled in having them filled with Rhett.  The weight of him, the scratch of his beard, the slip and rasp of his skin all worked in tandem to light a craving deep in his chest.   In search of more, he pushed at Rhett, directing him onto his back and easily straddling his waist.  Now pinning the larger man by his shoulders, Link inhaled the eucalyptus of his hair, then buried his nose in the crook of his jaw to swim in the smoky amber of his skin.

"How can you be so many things at once?" he asked, venturing a taste of Rhett's neck.  "You are both cool and warm," he breathed, punctuating his words with kisses that ended at the top of Rhett's high collar.  "So strong and so gentle.  So powerful and yet so kind and careful..."  His fingers pulled at the hem of Rhett's thick shirt, inspiring Rhett to take over.  He smirked and curled up off the bed to peel it off as Link did the same, tossing his own light shirt away with a flicker of a frown as he caught sight of the blood that had trickled down his collar. 

"I had sharp edges once," Rhett sighed, stretching back slowly beneath Link.  "You smoothed me out.  You are made of harder stuff."

"You say that."

"I know it," he replied, pulling at Link's wrists, dragging him down into another slow kiss.  "You are brave," he whispered against Link's chin when they'd separated for breath.  "And you deserve to get what you want.  And I'm here to give it to you now.  You can have it now."

The words had momentarily stunned him, but Link felt himself smile, dropping his chest fully onto Rhett's and sighing at the warmth of bare skin.  He could only lie still for so long, though, and within seconds, he found himself planting kisses down the side of Rhett's ribs as he squirmed on his back, a helpless grin plastered on his face.  As Link nipped at the skin over the narrowest point of Rhett's waist, he heard him gasp, quiet and stilted, and quickly wanted nothing more than to hear how many variations of such a sound Rhett could make.

Time was his to manipulate, as it had seemed to be all along, and in his excitement and impatience, Link closed his eyes tight once his chin had reached Rhett's waistband.  When they reopened, all such barriers had long been lost, and he had returned to lie stretched out over Rhett, face to face.  He rocked his hips down and dropped his forehead, delirious with the feeling. 

"Oh...oh no," he sighed.  Rhett quirked his head, looking up at him with the question in his eyes.  "That feels entirely too good," Link answered, catching his breath in the laugh they shared after.

"Do it again.  Do it as much as you want," Rhett whispered gruffly, rocking his own pelvis upward in encouragement.  They slid against each other, recklessly treading the line between addictive friction and sensory overload.  Their mouths met again, locking in a brash and frantic connection that fueled and was fueled by the grinding of slicker skin. 

Cycling between overstimulation and desperate withdrawal, this went on for what could have been hours, days.  Link opened his eyes and found himself on his back, staring up at a white ceiling while two large hands roved his torso, sliding down his sides to his hips and gliding over his thighs, pressing him back into the mattress.  Happy to be anchored again, he let his hands rest on his stomach while Rhett teased the groove between his leg and his core, tongue tracing a dizzying foreign scripture into his skin.  It both tickled and built an unbearable heat in his groin. 

He hadn't recognized his own whine until Rhett chuckled at it, shushing him softly. 

"Ssh, now.  I've got you," he vowed quietly.  Fulfilling his promise, Rhett wrapped his lips around Link and let his tongue flutter against his tip.  When he dipped his head, Link reached for his hair, burying his fingers at Rhett's scalp, but letting him move of his own accord. 

Link wanted to watch, to take in this sight three decades and a death in the making, but his eyes stayed closed, forcing him to focus fully on what he felt.  There was heat and gratification, an unspoken wish in the act of being granted.  But there was also a pressure building in him, a hunger for more growing stronger and more violent with each passing second.  When he felt himself touch the back of Rhett's throat, he cried out and pulled away for fear of missing out on what he wanted most.

 When he found himself looking up at Rhett straddling him, panting and holding him firmly, he cursed himself for losing a single second of this.  But he had little time for self-reproach; he had to focus on Rhett's face as he lowered himself slowly, carefully.  His brow knitted just slightly as his lips parted in a pout that spoke of an indescribable mixture of sensations.  Link held his breath for Rhett, waiting him out, watching his eyes when they fluttered open and rolled as he sank fully onto his knees, legs framing Link's hips and pressing against the sides of his thighs.  A long moment of still silence passed between them in which Link let his hands rest gently on Rhett's legs, soothing and heartening him as best he could, until finally, green eyes opened fully and Rhett drew a deep breath.  Link joined him in the inhalation and smiled at the look of rapture painted across his face.  He knew his own expression must have matched, for he was steadily losing his mind to the tight warmth of Rhett's body.  They fit together easily, naturally, and had no trouble finding a smooth rhythm they could both appreciate.

But this was where Link lost his treasured grip on time.  From here, their bodies moved in the most unfair of flashes. 

Link spent five blissful seconds staring up at Rhett as he rocked onto him, jaw loose with bright teeth peeking out from behind bearded lips, before finding himself pinning Rhett down, biting at his shoulders and neck as they collided, legs wrapping tightly around his waist.  Rhett grabbed his hair and his eyes squeezed hopelessly tight, before opening to Rhett's back, faint freckles painting the shoulders he wanted nothing more than to sink his teeth into as they stood together on their knees, balancing on shifting blankets.  When he pulled out of the attack that left Rhett whimpering, he found himself gliding his hand up the length of an impossibly long leg that had been propped on his shoulder.  But even this he could not hold onto; these little moments slipped through his fingers, each more intense than the last, until he was again face-to-face with Rhett.

Their eyes had locked, gazes suddenly tethered to one another.  Rhett's brow had knitted in surrender to his pleasure, and he fell apart one short breath at a time, until Link cupped his cheek and brought their lips together again.  Rhett tried to kiss him back, but pulled away in a last gasp before falling completely silent, eyes drifting closed as he let a wave of euphoria roll through him.

The sight alone could have sparked a fire in Link's stomach, but the feel of Rhett rolling up against him, writhing in gratification sent the flames licking through his veins.  It tried to melt away the last of the frost that had settled beneath his skin; the battle between the two threatened to fling him into a frenzy.  In this way, his own climax took him by surprise, sending crackling electricity through every muscle of his body.  He kept his focus locked on Rhett's face, and fell equally silent when Rhett finally looked back up at him, eyes dark and glittering with the most satisfying exhaustion.  With Link's full attention, he bit his bottom lip shamelessly, letting it curl deviously at the guttural groan that it ignited.  For several seconds, it was the only sound in the room.

Then Rhett laughed. 

It was breathless and tired, but it was everything that Link needed to hear.  He pulled his hips away slowly, and Rhett shuddered at the loss, but his quiet laughter kept on.  With arms still trembling with adrenaline, he maneuvered Link onto his back in the middle of the bed, then wrapped himself around all that he could reach.  Link knew he was susceptible to the laughter, and he caught it quickly, chuckling to himself while they tried to catch their breath and let their bones rest against each other.

"Unbelievable," Rhett eventually sighed.

"Agreed.  I just wish..."  Link shook his head at his disjointed memory.  "I couldn't keep a hold on it.  I lost time in there.  I don't know if I ever told you what's been—"

"I know," Rhett cut him off quietly.  He hummed nonchalantly, nuzzling into Link's dampened hair.  "Maybe we'll just have to practice again until you can stay focused for the full event."

Link grinned at the suggestion, despite its failure to comfort him. 

"I don't care if you get distracted.  I still love you," Rhett added.  When Link said nothing, Rhett sighed heavily into his scalp.  He noticed, and turned his head at the drastic angle necessary to look Rhett in the face.

"What?" Link asked.  Rhett smiled, but furrowed his brow, as if the answer should have been obvious.

"Are you...do you have any desire to...to say that back?  I mean, you don't have to..."

"To say...oh.  Oh."

Rhett laughed coldly, pulling away and propping himself on his elbow.  Link turned to face him fully and curled his legs into his stomach, the room suddenly starting to chill him.

"You can answer honestly.  You won't hurt my feelings," Rhett hedged, training his eyes on Link, not letting him look away.  "Do you love me?"

Link could feel the answer in his throat.  He knew it should be easy enough to breathe life into it, to voice it confidently.  And yet, his tongue grew leaden as he stared wide-eyed into a face he knew better than his own.  He felt exhaustion creeping over him and wiped the remaining sheen of perspiration from his forehead, immediately recognizing the clamminess of his own skin.  What had sprung from the most pleasing exertion had turned feverish, reminding him too starkly of the deep chill he hadn't been able to shake. 

"I'm cold," he said quietly, predicting that Rhett would maneuver them into the blankets, rewrapping himself around Link's frame.  They said nothing more, but simply connected as much of their bodies as possible beneath the heavy comforter, trying to build heat.  And while it had started lightheartedly with jabs and tickling grazes of fingernails on ribs, it soon turned desperate.  Rhett had grasped on the importance of the task, even before Link himself realized how vital it was that they be able to create their own warmth.  He could have argued its arbitrariness, but Rhett said nothing, and simply turned Link over and spooned him tightly, pressing into the entirety of his cool back.

 As they lay still, Link let himself stare out into the gray wall of Rhett's bedroom, of his memory of Rhett's bedroom.  His eyes went glassy and distant as he let go of his increasingly weakened hold on time.  With Rhett at his back, he examined his own feelings of satisfaction, turning them over in his mind and trying to determine what thin, microscopic element must be missing, trying to understand why the puzzle piece just wasn't snapping into place.  So recently he had realized his innermost desire, the one forbidden line his body had wanted to cross long before his mind was willing to admit it.  And in the instant of recognition, he'd reached fulfillment, breezing past years of heartache and confusion and right into the arms of the only man he could imagine handing such a massive part of his heart.  When it came to Rhett, this was all he never knew he wanted.  And yet it wasn't _quite._

It all came back to the chill.  It was a signal, a reminder that the body behind him was not the Rhett he'd spent his life with.  It was a figment, a projection, a dream, an angel, a demon, or something for which he had no name.  But as close as it was in form and function, in spirit and strength, it was not the same Rhett. 

This realization came easily enough.  It made sense.  He only started to struggle when he tried to determine whether any of this mattered.  His Rhett was alive and well but somewhere else, but Link sensed that, even knowing this, he could be happy here.  His stand-in was believable, was kind and funny and knew everything he should about Link.  Permanence was not so terrifying a prospect, if this was as close as he could get to him.  His hands felt familiar enough; his lips were new and invigorating enough.  His voice was the same, and had the same soothing effect when it finally spoke again.

"You're miles away, huh?"

Link tightened his grip on the hand at his stomach.  "You said the pain...you said it was a good thing."

"Do you still hurt?"

"No.  Just cold.  But just then, I felt amazing.  I felt _everything_.  But...why would the pain a good thing?"

Rhett shifted behind him, loosening his arms on Link's sides, as if to prevent his own injury should Link bolt.  He breathed deeply and spoke his answer into the curve of Link's shoulder.

"Because perhaps it's a reminder of what it means to love with so much of yourself that, to feel separated from those you care about, you can actually feel yourself pulling apart."  He paused, considering the rest of his response carefully.  "If you didn't feel that incredible pain, then...then, you'd know it was really over.  The ache, the sting of being torn away like this...it's a reminder of what it means to be human.  Of what it means...to be alive."

Link blinked twice before letting the words out of his mouth: "Say that again."

He did not.  Instead, he pressed Link's palm flat against his chest, forcing him to acknowledge the steady rhythm created by his own body. 

"There's a reason you can feel this."

"My...heart?"

"Your pulse.  The ultimate sign of life," Rhett said slowly, tapping his fingers over Link's breastplate.  "Right in there."

 Link's chest suddenly felt like a dangerous place.  In it was a tight ball of razor wire shifting and throbbing, infusing the blood that ran through his heart with something caustic that burned at his muscles, daring them to spring, to wrap in long and lean binds around Rhett's throat, denying him the air that he wasn't supposed to need.  He wanted Rhett to repeat the words and take them back at the same time; they had been exactly what he did and did not want to hear.  They sparked the thinnest flame of hope, which was all it might take to send this new and beautiful existence up in smoke.  It was a promise and a threat, glorious and agonizing.  He didn't know whether to laugh or to cry, so he did nothing for a long while.  He stared into the empty air before him and let the ball of heat spin behind his skin, radiating its energy through his ribs, and sparking all the way down to his fingertips.

He pushed himself up to sit against the headboard, pulling a white sheet from beneath the comforter and wrapping himself in it.  Rhett did the same, sitting close enough for their hips to touch.  They looked out at the foot of the bed in a long silence.  Rhett broke it first.

"But, you know, you can stay."

"If I don't..."

"You can stay.  You can be here with me.  We can do whatever we want.  Together.  We can just lie here, or we can go back to the beach, or we can...we can do anything.  We can just enjoy each other, however we want."

Link held his tongue; there was nothing more to say.  There were no more questions to ask, and Rhett had run out of answers.  All he needed to know, Link could figure out for himself.  He had been doing it all along.

He read in the desperation of Rhett's voice, in the speed of his suggestions, that there was a choice to be made.  He was not stuck here, in this tangible hallucination.  Yet the prospect of staying seemed undeniably safe and comfortable.  He could have anything he wanted, so long as he could be satisfied with it feeling just a little less than real.  Even if this Rhett couldn't warm him, he'd be there all the same, loving and holding him for as long as he needed. 

But it was the potential impermanence that had scared Rhett into chattering away at his side. 

Rhett licked his lips and looked at his hands.  "I can't say what happens if you...  I mean, you know what I am here.  We don't know what I'll be out there.  I might not..." As he trailed, Link's shoulders drew up in a cringe.  He wrapped his arms around himself, and Rhett reached for his bicep, forcing him to look up. 

"Listen to me, Link.  I love you.  It doesn't matter where we are.  I love you.  I can't not.  It's not possible, not in any world.  Of all the universes there may be out there, there simply is not one where I don't love you.  But if you wake up...I might not be ready to say it, to prove it.  And...I might never be."  He breathed deeply before shaking his head, blinking away the emotions threatening to well in his eyes.  "And you might not be, either.  You may not feel the same way.  Not for a long time, or maybe not ever.  That world will not be so easy to bear.  We've only just scratched the surface here, and out there...we may never find our way back."

Link hushed him gently and got to his knees, throwing his leg over Rhett's thighs and settling into his lap.  He sighed as strong arms wrapped around him, broad palms spreading over the small of his back.

For a long while, they stared each other, reveling in a proximity that, in another life, would have made them laugh and shy away in discomfort.  Here, it was allowed, and so Link embraced it, memorizing the details of Rhett's eyes, the rhythm of his quiet breath, the tinge of a smile at the corner of lips that he never got to watch from so close. 

His fingers fell on either side of Rhett's neck, tracing lightly up and down.

"I do love this," Link finally said, his voice barely a whisper as he marveled at the ease with which they held each other. 

"We're exactly where we should be.  I'm not going anywhere," Rhett promised, shaking his head before leaning his forehead against Link's, accepting the weight of all that went unsaid.

The world had settled around them, ceasing its unnatural twists and allowing Link to finally feel at peace.  He'd reached the precipice toward which every confusing jerk into and out of his memory had been leading, and all that remained was a leap.  The life he'd left behind was waiting for him, neatly packed away in the back of his mind.  He knew what it held, and he sensed for the first time that he could truly rejoin it.  But doing so meant letting go of the wisps of hair that had settled between his fingers at the nape of Rhett's neck, pulling away from the artificial warmth of a long, lean body that wanted nothing more than to hold him in exactly the way he wanted to be held.  This was better than home; it was guaranteed.  The waking world could make no such promises. 

He hadn't known he'd been crying until Rhett sat upright and wiped away a stream of tears.  Link laughed at himself and sniffed, shaking his head as he spoke.

"Why did you tell me I was...why didn't you," Link stumbled through the phrase, trying to find the words.  Rhett shook his head.

"I didn't tell you anything.  You decided you were dead."

It felt good to laugh at the absurdity of the sentence, so they did. 

"Why didn't you correct me?"

"I did."

Link lightly scoffed and rolled his eyes.  "Sooner."

Rhett considered the question and brushed a stray hair from Link's forehead.  "There wasn't anything I could say to take that pain away.  You were already angry with me, but you would have turned on yourself for not figuring it out sooner, for spending so much..." Rhett couldn't finish the thought; he didn't need to.

"I don't know where you came from," Link said, as if for the first time, though he'd grown comfortable with the fact that this was not the same Rhett he'd always know. "And I don't know what...what you are...but I do love you, Rhett.  I could never regret spending so much time with you.  I love you.  For all you've done for me, for all you're willing to give me.  You put me back together."

"You put yourself together."

"Maybe so.  But I needed you here to do it.  I think I trust you more than myself," he confessed, wiping away another tear with the back of his hand.  "I don't know how to thank you."

With that, Rhett fell back against the headboard and looked up at Link, lips pulled into a crooked grin.  They stared at each other a moment longer, before Rhett sighed heavily.  A single, subtle nod was all the sign that Link needed.

He leaned forward, wrapping his arms fully around Rhett's neck and sinking into a heavy kiss.  He squeezed his eyes closed and forced himself to note everything he felt, from the scratch of Rhett's beard to the taste of his lips, as they shared a single breath between them in a final goodbye.


	12. Saying the Words

The week had dragged by, catching on the skin of those who lived it and eroding them away.  By its end, Rhett and Christy had learned to communicate less with words and more with shrugs and frowns.  

The cut at Link's temple had all but healed, scabbing over and promising to leave a faint scar.  His bruises faded into mere shadows, subtle reminders of progress that was growing dangerously easy to overlook.  His body's ability to mend its wounds and stave off infection was a promising sign diminished and far outweighed by its refusal to open his eyes.  

On the 30th, Christy had suggested that Rhett spend the weekend at home with his family.  They had returned late Thursday night, exhausted from their visit to the east coast and yet too anxious to relax enough to recharge.  Two important bricks had slipped from their foundation, bound to each other even through the barrier of consciousness.  Though she had sensed it in her increasingly brief phone conversations with Rhett, it was at the end their first shared meal on Friday that Jessie realized she would not get one back without the other.

"Can I make an observation?" she asked, sliding her fingernail along the rim of her empty wine glass.  Rhett raised his eyebrows from across the table, making a show of leaning into the backrest of the booth. 

"Please do," he replied, taking a long drink of his own.

"You're a mess."

Rhett steeled himself for the criticism he knew would follow.  His sleep had been erratic at best, his meals sporadic and lacking in the nourishment to which he'd been accustomed.  In seeking solace in warm showers, his skin had dried out.  After only a week, he'd earned dark circles around his eyes and an air of exhaustion that spoke of absent self-interest.

"Yeah.  I know I've slacked a little."

Jessie straightened her back and shook her head.  "I mean...I understand the stress you're under.  I just...I'm worried.  Of course I'm worried.  Everyone is worried.  That sounded stupid."

"No, I get it," he answered, trying to kindly shut down the conversation.

"I'm just...about you.  I'm worried about _you_ , too."  They paused, letting the words hang between them, before Jessie sighed and finished the thought she hardly wanted to speak.  "I know he's stable.  I know there is reason to hope.  But we also have to consider the possibility that...that hope might not be enough."

Naturally, this had not been the first time he'd considered the notion that Link may never return.  But hearing his own wife give voice to the dangerous prospect stung enough to catch him off guard.  He chewed at his top lip, breaking eye contact for favor of staring into the tabletop.  It was a natural to consider a loss in such a circumstance, and yet from Jessie, the words felt like betrayal. 

Her eyes widened at his response, at the sudden distance between them.

"I only mean that...you still have a life to live, regardless of _when_ he wakes up.  But...what if it's not for months?  You can't keep on like this.  You have to come home and...eat, and sleep, and go to work, and feel productive."

"What work am I supposed to do?  Should I start developing my solo act?"  The suggestion dripped with bitterness.  She was ready for it.

"Rhett.  Stop it.  You know that's not what I meant."

"You're right," he conceded, finally raising his eyes to her.  She flinched at their intensity as he continued.  "I will take better care of myself.  I'm going to come home, and I'll be present.  I'll be there for you guys.  But...you can't ask me to go on as usual with him in there.  There is no work for me to do that doesn't involve him.  There is _nothing_ that I can do that will make any sense without him."

The promise didn't end how either of them had expected, so they simply stared at each other, testing the weight of the words.  He sensed that he could backpedal, explain himself, dilute the sting of the admission, but he let the window of opportunity slip closed without him. 

Jessie looked away, letting her eyes fall on nothing in particular out in the open space of the restaurant.  Had he been paying attention, he'd have noticed the deep breaths she took to ease away the questions she didn't have the nerve to ask.  Instead, she sighed and tossed her napkin on the table.

"Well.  Let's go see him, then."

 

* * *

 

The hospital was quiet as Jessie followed Rhett through its lobby, toward an elevator, and up to the third floor.  By the time they reached room 3110, she was breathing heavily through her nose, having struggled to keep Rhett's pace from the moment he stepped out of the car.  Still, as he knocked quietly and pushed the door open, she found herself holding her breath.

The first face she saw was Christy's, smiling tiredly from the recliner near the head of the bed.  Another small step around the corner of the entryway put Link in her line of sight.  In the frenzy following the accident, she'd had to rush her sons off to the opposite side of the country, leaving her no chance to visit the hospital.  She'd outwardly regretted her absence, apologizing repeatedly to Christy and Rhett, but now in the room, she could not deny the little voice that had whispered relief at the fact that she'd escaped this responsibility.  Standing in front of him was expectedly uncomfortable, as she couldn't help but look at the maze of tubes and wires extending to and from his forearms and fingers.  The IV tree standing just over his right shoulder held three bags of different sizes; a screen behind the tree displayed the rhythm of a steady pulse, oxygen levels, and every so often, a blood pressure that came from the cuff strapped around his upper arm, hiding beneath the crisp gown.  Still, it was easier for her to look at all of this than to look directly at him.  To let her gaze rest on his face felt intrusive, as if he could open his eyes at any second and catch her staring.  It felt impolite to look at him when he could not look back, when Christy might see her staring at his faint bruises.  She felt sorry for him. 

And she felt something else. 

Rhett spoke easily with Christy about a doctor that had visited that afternoon, touting, as they all did, the importance of giving Link's body all the time it needed to heal.  They spoke of decreased swelling in his brain, healthy reflexes, and all the signs that pointed to recovery.  Halfway through this hushed conversation, Jessie set her purse on the cabinet near the television, then turned to glance at Rhett, expecting him to be looking at Christy.  Instead, he was staring directly at Link, eyes locked onto the lineless face turned upward just enough that, should he open his eyes, Link could have looked directly back.  While his inability to look at his conversational partner was surprising enough, Christy's acceptance of Rhett's inattention struck a far more sensitive nerve.  Some kind of understanding had settled between them, a communal knowledge going unspoken as they moved delicately around one another, orbiting the same sun.

  Jessie was shaken from her staring by Christy's approach.  Her arms were extended for a hug that Jessie sank into easily.  They pulled each other tight and held on for a long while. 

"I'm glad you're back.  It's been such a...it's been hard," Christy said into Jessie's hair.

"We're all here.  We're going to do whatever we can to make this easier.  Say the word, we're there."

Christy nodded at the sentiment as she pulled away and reached for her jacket, taking a deep breath before reciting a line she'd been rehearsing for the previous few hours.

"I think we all need to go home and take a breath tonight."

Rhett's spine straightened.  "What?"

"I'm going to go home," she explained, slipping her arms into her white coat and tossing her bag on her shoulder.  "And I think you should do the same.  You need to be with your family, Rhett.  He'll be here.  He'll be okay for one night," she said in a practiced level tone.

Jessie smiled sadly at the suggestion, grateful for Christy's bravery in making it, despite how uncomfortable she seemed with it.

"I'll come back tomorrow morning, and I'll call with any updates.  And it'll save you fare of taking a car back home tomorrow morning, anyway," she added, trying to lighten the mood.  Jessie smiled.  Rhett did not.

He rolled his shoulders, caught between a desire to spend a full night and day in his own home and the marginally stronger urge to spend the rest of his life in this room, if that was what it took for Link to open his eyes.

"Yeah.  Of course.  Sure thing," he finally responded, the shaking of his head conflicting the affirmation.  "I can come back tomorrow night."

Jessie's mouth opened, but the protest stuck in the back of her throat.  If Christy noticed, she said nothing of it, instead making her way back to the head of the bed and dropping a kiss on Link's forehead.  Her fingers brushed through his hair as she spoke to Jessie.

"Maybe we can spend New Year's Eve together?  Bring the boys over.  Mama would love to see them, and the gang is getting a little cabin fever."

The proposition soothed Jessie, so she nodded her agreement with little thought.  "We'll be there."

"Good.  Perfect," Christy smiled, turning back to face Link before her departure.  "You hear that?  We're making plans for our evening tomorrow.  It's a date.  So, don't worry about waking up or anything, 'cause I certainly won't come rushing all the way up here to see you.  Forget about it."

Rhett pulled a small smile and shook his head at her as she passed.

"We're trying reverse psychology now.  I think.  Did I do that right?  Who even knows anymore?  See you tomorrow," she muttered, patting Rhett's shoulder and pecking Jessie's cheek before disappearing out the door. 

The room stayed quiet in Christy's absence, Rhett taking her place in the recliner nearest Link, Jessie dropping onto the bench across from the foot of the bed.  He watched Link; she watched him.

"He looks better than I expected," she finally confessed.  Rhett nodded.

"He's come a long way.  These bruises," he explained, reaching toward Link's cheekbone to indicate the shadows still painting his skin, "were a lot worse."  As his arm pulled back, he thoughtlessly brushed a lock of hair from Link's forehead.  "He'll be sorry to have missed them."

"Have you talked to Stevie recently?" she asked, nodding toward the bed when Rhett turned at the question.  He grinned knowingly, pointedly directing his answer toward Link.

"I have.  I called her yesterday afternoon.  We're pushing back the season indefinitely.  They're still going back in on the ninth, so we'll have weeks' worth of material planned out, ready to film.  But people are going to be upset.  People will worry for a while.  Then, who knows.  Lose interest?"

They watched his face together, and Jessie was surprised how easily she took to the gallows humor.

"We had a good life out here.  It'll be good to go back home, though.  There are plenty of agencies hiring out there.  I saw some postings in the paper at Mom's.  You can put that expensive piece of paper to use again."

"You bet."

Jessie pulled her knees into her chest and wrinkled her nose.  "Oh, I made myself feel bad.  Following reverse psychology with a guilt trip might have been a little too much."

"He's tough."

"So what have you been doing here?  How did you spend the nights?"

Rhett scratched his beard, leaning back in the chair.  "Watched movies.  Listened to music.  Napped.  Read magazines.  Just hung out, really.  It's surprisingly peaceful here at night.  The whole floor goes quiet."

She rested her chin on her knees, picturing Rhett moving about the room, sitting in different chairs, curling up on the loveseat by the window, and stretching over the bench beneath the television, but nothing seemed as natural as the image of him sitting within arm's reach of Link, his hand resting on the edge of the bed, waiting for Link to reach out for it.  The thought raised a lump in her throat that she tried to cough away.

They sat in a long silence as Rhett visibly wrestled with the notion of leaving Link alone for the night.  The sound of a neighboring room's television hung in the air, a constant quiet chatter that made the time slip by surprisingly easily.  They'd listened to an entire news program before Jessie eventually pushed herself up and crossed the distance to the bed.

"We're going home for the night," she told Link, pausing a moment before dropping her hand onto his.  "I hope you don't mind if I take him back for a few hours.  He'll be back tomorrow night," she heard herself promise, shooting Rhett a quick look as if to say, _Let's go._

She couldn't have said why, but she decided to leave Rhett to say his goodbye alone.  Her tired legs carried her quietly out of the room and leaned her against a hallway wall while her chest tightened and twisted around a vague feeling that was growing clearer by the second. 

With a few cleansing breaths, it was easy enough to ignore.  But she quickly realized that she'd left her purse in the room and turned to retrieve it, consequently finding Rhett leaning down at the head of the bed, whispering into Link's ear.  The feeling bared its teeth, snarling within her for a painfully stretched second until Rhett planted a kiss at the corner of Link's lips and it introduced itself properly, a faint apparition that had haunted the perimeter of her entire adult life, now sinking its fangs directly into her heart. Jealousy.

Jessie was not one to shy away from confrontation.  Between the two of them, she was almost always the first to engage in uncomfortable encounters, the first to raise an issue and begin the work necessary to fix it.  But this apparent confirmation of her wildest suspicions knocked her off balance.  She simply took back her steps, retreating silently into the hallway and dropping against the wall while her heart pounded at her ribcage.

 

* * *

Rhett straightened, giving Link a final look before whispering "See you tomorrow," and heading for the door.  On his way, he caught sight of Jessie's purse and grabbed it, swinging it over his shoulder.  He slipped through the half-opened door, slowly pulling it shut behind him, and found Jessie waiting at the end of the hall. 

_One foot in front of the other.  One step at a time._   He repeated his mantra, this attempt at distracting himself from the prospect of Link waking up alone in an unfamiliar room, confused or afraid.  It cycled through his head with every footfall until he came to Jessie's side.  She stared at the floor in front of her feet, failing to look up at his approach. 

"You almost made a donation," he said, handing the purse over.  She snapped out of her daze and nodded, taking it from his fingers and throwing it over her own arm.  They made their way to the elevator, to the parking garage, to the car, to the highway.  It was only as they approached their home exit, after forty minutes of driving, that he recognized the silence that had wedged between them.

"You alright?" he asked quietly, reaching for her knee.  The gesture was familiar, and typically met with her own hand falling atop of his.  This night was different.

"I'm okay.  I'm just tired."

This was all he needed to hear to feel a shot of adrenaline flood his veins.  It was a code he'd interpreted years ago, a signal that all was anything but well, and that he should know exactly why; she would not be spelling anything out for him.  He hated the passive aggressiveness of the line, but he couldn't deny having employed the code himself.  For its speaker, it was an easy out.  For its recipient, it was a jab for which there was no good riposte.  So he sat with the sting until they made it home, said goodnight to their sitter, closed down their quiet house, and slid into bed. 

As his own bed cradled him, Rhett gave a genuine groan of satisfaction.  The muscles of his mid-back started to relax for the first time in over a week, at home in a mattress that remembered him and conformed to even the smallest peaks and valleys of his body.  Pulling the soft white sheet and heavy comforter up to his chin, he briefly considered if the emotional upheaval this week had brought him had been more a result of poor sleep than anything else.  He remembered, in this moment, what sleeplessness did to him.  He winced at imageless flashbacks of having newborns in his house, waking every three hours for weeks on end, growing paranoid and needy, depending heavily on the love and attention of those around him, most notably, the one who had survived it all before: Link. And now, years later and two thousand miles from that life, he found himself suffering a similar state of exhaustion from hours spent in a different kind of worry, a far more helpless one, with no one to turn to for advice.  It would have been nice to sleep away the pangs of guilt that stemmed less from leaving Link alone and more from how he'd kissed him before his departure.  It would have been easy to laugh it off in the morning, looking at the situation with well-rested eyes that might see such gestures and thoughts as fleeting acts of desperation.  The fact that he so badly longed to feel the warmth of Link's mouth on his lips told him how unlikely such a revelation would be.

Despite his brain's fearful frenzy, he was in no shape for tossing or turning.  In the warmth of his own home and the comfort of his own blankets, he stood little chance of fighting the deep sleep that quickly came to drag him away.

 

Morning crept up on Rhett, slipping in on soft sunrays that, for a few precious minutes of the early sunrise, gave his bedroom an ethereal glow.  It was possible that this light had woken him.  It may have been the subtle smell of coffee brewing from the kitchen.  But most likely, it was the two pairs of bright eyes staring at him from the doorway.  When he cracked his own eyes to look at them, his boys rushed the room, jumping wildly onto the bed and wiggling up at closely to their father as they could, one with reckless abandon, one with the hint of cool reservation.  Rhett laughed at them both, groaning and trying to writhe away from more small, cold feet and fingers than he could manage.  He quickly gave up, letting them lean on him, despite the emptiness of the opposite side of the bed.

For a while, they lay quietly, listening to each other breathe and soaking in the sacredness of being officially reunited.  They were a team, after all, loyal and bound by their sex, pretending there was any kind of power in their majority.  But after a while, just as Rhett was drifting back toward a light sleep, the boys started talking, telling stories about their trip to the east coast.  Listening was easy.  Rhett asked questions about the family he'd missed, asked about the meals they'd eaten, asked about the pets they'd seen.  But as he'd feared they would, the questions eventually came firing back at him.  Mostly, they came from the smaller son, but his older brother could not hide his curiosity when Rhett searched for careful answers.

"Why didn't you ever come?"  The question stemmed from past experiences; he'd had to follow behind his family more than once on their journeys east.

"You know why I stayed, bud.  I had to be there for Link."

"Did you have to take care of him?"

Rhett brushed a curl of blond hair away from Shepherd's eyes.  "Well, there are nurses and doctors who are doing that."

"So you could've come," Locke chimed in.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there.  You're obviously upset about it.  You must have missed me quite a bit," Rhett jabbed, knowing exactly how to get under his eldest's skin. 

" _I_ didn't care.  I just had to listen to _him_ cry about it," Locke quickly protested.  Shepherd didn't care to defend himself.  He went on with his interrogation.

"Did you have to sleep in the hospital?"

"No.  I slept in the hotel.  But I slept a lot in the hospital room, too."

"You were there every night."

"Yep."

"Even though he never woke up."

"Yep."

"So why go?  Isn't it boring?  He can't even play games or anything."

"That's why we always wanted someone there.  We didn't want him to get bored."

This puzzled Shepherd.  He thought it over for a good while before finally turning to face Rhett head-on.  "What?"

Rhett laughed.

"We'd turn the TV on so he could listen to it.  I played music for him, talked to him."

"He can't talk back."

"That's okay.  I told him stories, let him know we were all thinking about him.  You _were_ thinking about him, right?"

Shepherd nodded immediately.  Locke felt his dad staring him down and shrugged through his own reluctant nod. 

"Good.  He may not have said anything back yet, but I'm pretty confident he can hear us."

"Do you think he's dreaming?"

It was Rhett's turn to think.  He sighed and scratched his beard.  "I don't know.  I bet he is, sometimes.  You know he has a wild imagination."

"Are you going to go tonight?"

"Yeah, I think so, son."

"It's New Year's Eve, though."

Rhett mussed the hair he'd just smoothed.  "Guess you think you're staying up late."

"It's New Year's Eve!" he repeated, squealing in an excitement that had yet to last until midnight.  Locke laughed, so Rhett did too.

"You won't even notice I'm gone.  You'll be at the Neals'."  Something about the name sent a twinge through his chest.  It connoted a brightness that had been notably dimmed. 

"I guess that's okay.  I wouldn't want to be by myself," Shepherd conceded.  He perked up when his mother's voice called out from down the hallway, beckoning the trio to breakfast.  Locke jumped up and disappeared in a flash.  Shepherd moved a little more slowly, waiting around for Rhett to crawl out of the bed and pull its covers straight.

"Dad?"

"Hmm?"

"Will you," he began, glancing at the doorway for the presence of an older brother before asking, "will you tell Link that I hope he's okay?  That I'm sorry he got hurt on our Christmas?"

Rhett felt his brow draw together at the sincerity, and he crouched in front of his son, swallowing thickly upon seeing a trace of redness to his eyes. 

"Sure thing, buddy.  ...You okay?"

Shepherd nodded emphatically, laughing at himself as he rubbed his eye.  "Locke said it was dumb to be scared, or to miss him when he hasn't been gone that long, but..." His small shoulders raised in quick apologetic shrug.  "I kinda do."

Rhett dropped to his knees and pulled Shepherd into a tight hug, resting their heads together as small arms slowly wrapped around his ribs.  He took a deep breath and rapidly blinked away the tears threatening to overtake him. 

"You know, your brother is pretty smart.  But he isn't right about everything.  That's not dumb.  It's perfectly normal to miss him, Shep.  It may have only been a few days, but I miss him like crazy."  He winced as his voice wavered, but pushed through it, knowing that talking was the only way he could stop himself from crying.  "We just gotta be patient.  It's gonna be any day now.  Maybe today.  Maybe tomorrow.  He'll wake up, they'll make sure he's healthy, and he'll come home, and I won't have to spend so much time away looking after him.  Everything will be back to normal.  But right now, I'm back, you guys are back, and we're all together again.  We're halfway there already."  Feeling secure in his resolve, Rhett finally pulled back and smiled softly at Shepherd.  "Can I tell him that you miss him?  Maybe it will help him stop being so stubborn, huh?"

Shepherd thought carefully about this, so Rhett added, "I won't tell your brother."

"Okay."

"Okay.  Let's go eat breakfast before we get in trouble."

 

 

The day passed more easily than any of the last week.  A night in his own home had brought Rhett a renewed energy to which he clung by keeping himself busy.  He cleaned the kitchen after breakfast, helped with the week's worth of his family's laundry, and assembled the few remote-controlled toys and gadgets given to his sons by their grandparents, only taking a break to watch the first hour's worth of play for a new video game.  The living room had gone quiet as the boys sat on the couch, captivated by their game.  Jessie napped on the loveseat, as she tended to do in these moments, and from his place in his oversized chair, Rhett found his mind falling victim to the stillness, creeping away with his attention, wondering if he'd charged his phone overnight, if he'd be able to hear it from its place in the bedroom, should Christy call.  He planned his route to the hospital, knowing that traffic on a holiday would be a nightmare.  He tried to close his eyes, too, to gain a little more energy for the long night ahead, and he was swept into memories of past New Year celebrations.  He saw Link dancing on a balcony somewhere, Link arching a brow with a playing card sticking out of the top of his glasses as he gambled a pile of quarters recklessly, Link belting out his own rendition of a Celine Dion classic with every ounce of sincerity in his body, Link stretching onto his toes in order to plant an intentionally sloppy kiss on Rhett's cheek at midnight, transferring Christy's pink lipstick to his cheekbone and laughing at his scandalized expression.  For decades, they'd been ringing in new years together, making some memories that had gone fuzzy from champagne and others that had only crystallized in Link's absence. 

Drifting in a light doze, he dreamed his memory of lying on the roof of his first home in California, forgetting how they'd gotten there but remembering the fireworks bursting overhead, lighting Link up with faint greens and yellows.  Though his face was upturned, his eyes were closed, missing the lightshow in the sky.  Rhett felt himself grow antsy at the realization that Link wasn't seeing what they were all supposed to be watching.  He wanted to reach out to tap Link's shoulder, to shake him from whatever had pulled his eyelids closed.  Each boom overhead fueled Rhett's anxiety until he pushed himself up onto his knees in order to crawl to Link.  In reaching for the still hand resting palm up on his gray shingles, Rhett lost his balance and went sliding toward the edge of the roof.  The sensation of falling woke him; his head jerked upward, hurling his consciousness back into his living room.  In a quick sweeping glance, he found his boys still engrossed in their game, but Jessie staring right at him.  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and smiled sheepishly, leaning his head against the back of the chair to stretch his neck and will away the dizziness of his dream.  In doing so, he missed her exhale heavily into the crook of her arm.

 

Afternoon bled into evening, and the house came back to life with bodies buzzing around in preparation for a night away.  The boys packed an overnight back, bickering lightly over which games to bring while Jessie filled a small cooler with miscellaneous ingredients from her refrigerator, citing her responsibility for the big New Year breakfast at the Neals'.  The only person not flitting about the house was Rhett, who sat calmly at the breakfast bar, patiently waiting for everyone to regroup at the door to the garage.  His mind had gone quiet in anticipation of his own evening, as uneventful as it promised to be.  He stayed just as quiet on the trip over, saying little more than a word or two before eventually following his family up the concrete walkway to the Neals' front porch.  His eyes widened when the front door opened and Christy stood on the other side.  She noticed.

"I didn't want to miss dinner.  Mama's had the kids working all afternoon."

Missing the nonverbal exchange happening over her head, Jessie steered her boys into the house and headed for the kitchen.  Rhett followed his crew at a distance, seemingly the only one affected by the weight of the house's atmosphere.  Each step felt like walking through sand, his forward momentum stunted by the irrational expectation that Link would appear around every other corner.  But in a way, he did.

He was in the living room, in the face of his eldest son sitting on the floor, momentarily escaping a constant state of worry to laugh at his dog.  He was in the dining room, in a silver travel mug that he'd bragged about at the office a month ago.  He was in the kitchen, in a familiar set of keys abandoned to a wooden bowl.  He was even in the air:  the house smelled like cinnamon, as it did every winter, taking Rhett back to the last time he'd picked Link up, the scent still clinging to him as he settled into the car.  It was now both comforting and cold, a silent reminder of an acute absence as it managed to sneak itself into the meal.

Rhett was grateful for the distraction of dinner, and he focused intently on eating.  Benign conversation ricocheted around him, but he couldn't bring himself to participate.  His mind was already miles away, glad to be watching an unchanged face do nothing.  He hardly noticed when the kids disappeared, taking stacks of dishes with them at the direction of their grandmother, who followed behind.  Within seconds, a clatter of dishes rang out from the kitchen, and Christy hopped up to check on the cacophony, leaving Rhett and Jessie alone in the dining room.  She folded her hands together on the tabletop and sighed.

"Dinner was good," he said quietly.

"You've been quiet," she said at the same time, perking up at their clashing voices.  She watched his face for a moment, and upon recognizing that he would not risk interrupting her again, she continued.  "You've been a little spacey.  Are we all really so boring that you'd rather _think about_ sitting with him than try to enjoy a holiday dinner with your family?"

His spine straightened at the venom in her accusation.  "Where is this coming from?"

She brushed the hair from her face and sat back.  "Nowhere.  Nothing is coming from anywhere."

"Oh," he quipped, sparking to life in the face of the fight she was clearly biting back.  The tension between them had buried itself under their busyness, an undercurrent to a day not quite active enough for him to completely forget about Link's condition.  He knew resentment when he saw it in her face.  But he knew only half of its cause.  It didn't matter; he hardly felt like backing down. 

"You've been giving me these looks all day.  You've dished out the silent treatment like it's going out of style.  But that's coming from nowhere.  That's just for the fun of it."

"Maybe I wanted to spend tonight with my husband.  Maybe I'm not ready to give up the tradition of celebrating the new year with you.  Maybe I'm a little hurt that—" The moment her voice cracked, she closed her mouth, repeating the gesture of brushing absent hair from her face.  A deep breath gave her the composure she needed to finish the thought.  "Maybe I'm a little hurt that you're choosing him."

"'Choosing' him?  I'm choosing to be there for him if he needs me because Christy just spent the whole day there."  He leaned forward, shaking his head in shock at the accusation.  "Are you serious?  I'm not choosing him over you.  That's not at all...that's crazy."

"Is it?" she asked, face brightening at the appearance of Locke in the dining room doorway.  "What's up?"

"Can we go pick out ice cream?  They're going out before the store closes."

Jessie forced a smile and nodded.  "Yes, baby.  Go ahead."

Rhett added, "Tell her not to break forty.  I don't think you're allowed to have that many kids in a vehicle.  I don't care how many rows it has.  The cops will take you all in."

"Whatever, dad," was the only response they heard before a chorus of voices disappeared into the garage.  The pair allowed the silence to settle over them.  With it came a renewed tension, nearly unbearable from Rhett's place at the table. 

"Have you tried seeing it from my perspective?" Jessie asked as he stood and pushed in his chair.  He leaned on its back and rubbed his eyes. 

"No.  No, okay," he admitted willingly, shaking his head in defeated exhaustion.  "I _haven't_ tried seeing it from your eyes, or any of theirs," he added, gesturing sweepingly toward the now empty kitchen.  "I haven't tried to see his parents' side of this.  I haven't tried to see it from the fans' perspective, and they don't even know yet.  Or maybe they do, I don't know.  I haven't tried to see it from anyone's view but my own, because I still can't wrap my head around the notion that this _isn't_ like it was twenty years ago.  He's _not_ okay.  For all we know," he said, pausing only to take a shaky breath, "he's gone, and his body just hasn't gotten the message yet.  And I don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to do with that, when I've built a business, a career, a livelihood that doesn't work without him.  None of it will work without him.   And that...that's not even what I'm struggling with most.  We've been together for thirty years, Jessie.  He's been there my whole life.  And all of a sudden, maybe he isn't.  And I don't get to just walk away and grieve.  If he doesn't come back...all of this that we've built together, I have to disassemble by myself.  I'll have to be the one to make some kind of statement, to _say it_ to millions of people, and then watch as everything we've worked so hard for is just dismantled piece by piece.  All the work we've done, all the memories that we've made will be reduced to a stack of boxes in a storage unit somewhere, and I'll have to be the one to put it there.  And _then_ I have to go on, have to be a good father and a good husband, as if half of my heart didn't just get ripped out of me."

Only when he stopped did he feel the stream of hot tears streaking down his cheek.  It took the silence that followed to make him realize how loudly he'd been talking, voice straining until he let it say far more than he'd expected.  For the second time in as many days, his mouth had run away with him, sharing more than he knew what to do with.  And the impact was clear: Jessie's jaw had gone tight, her brow knitting as she anticipated hearing the few remaining words that went unsaid.  Their eyes burned into one another, Rhett breathing heavily through his nose as his mind raced in yet another effort to backtrack, to make her unhear the last full thought he'd been able to choke out.  She did not raise her voice, but instead, wiped away a tear of her own and stood up, trying in vain to level their gazes.  Her composure rattled him:  she only moved so quietly and with such resolve when she knew she had an airtight point to make.  After a series of deep sighs, she nodded to herself and inhaled slowly.  When she spoke, her voice was low, nearly a whisper, but steady.

"Just say it.  Just admit it.  I can't promise, but I think it's going to hurt so much less when you just tell me, when you just say the words out loud.  I'm ready."

He shook his head.  "Tell you what?"  He half expected her not to answer at all, to force him to figure it out on his own.  But it seemed she was tired of waiting.

"That you're so afraid of losing him because you've only just realized...that you love him."

"Of course I love him.  That's never been—"

"That you're in love with him.  That maybe you believe in multiple soul mates...and that you just realized that he is one of yours."

He couldn't speak an objection, so he settled for shaking his head.  It was a futile defense.  She'd made up her mind.

"Don't.  Don't try to pretend you don't know what I'm talking about.  I won't lord it over you:  I saw you.  Last night, when we were leaving the hospital, I saw you kiss him.  It looked entirely too natural for it to have been the first time."

Rhett thought his ears would catch fire, they burned so fiercely.  The ground seemed to be melting out from under him, so he leaned heavily onto the chairback, searching deep within himself for the right response and coming up empty handed.

"I wouldn't expect you to be forthcoming with it," she finally said, relieving him of the burden of a response.  "But you aren't denying it either.  So just say it."

He shook his head again, but only as a means of acknowledging the insanity of the request before leaning into it.  "I love you."

"And?"

"And I think I love him, too."  The words came surprisingly easily, and seemed to quench some of the fire behind her eyes.  Her expression softened, the anger leaving her body.

"Okay."  She nodded again, coming to her own conclusions while he just shook his head at what must have been a dissolution of reality.  She kept on.  "You can understand my...my anger.  He's always been there, you know, with bond that you committed so much of yourself to.  And I've encouraged you to do it.  I pushed you toward him because I knew you could do something great together.  I've always accepted that he got a little part of you that I don't get.  He's staked a claim on you that I was a little jealous of, but I always took comfort in knowing that I had your heart.  I just...regardless of what happens, I need to know that I still have some of you, too.  That I'm still worth living for, too.  That you still want me, too."

He could only stare as he allowed the realization to sink in.  In grappling with a paralyzing fear of losing a love he'd only discovered, he'd made his wife question her standing.  When the flicker of fear in her eyes registered, he rounded the table, crossing the space in two long strides, and dropped to his knees for the second time that day, wrapping his arms around her waist.  A fresh wave of guilt washed over him, pouring in apologies, in affirmations of admiration and devotion that caused his voice to tremble at the prospect of losing her. 

"I'm sorry.  I'm sorry I've made you feel like this.  You were right: I _am_ a mess.  I don't know what's happening to me, why I've turned my back on you.  But I never want to make you feel unloved or insecure in this thing.  I can't imagine trying to do this without you.  I've taken you for granted, and I'm sorry.  I love you more every day.  I hate that I've weakened the words, but I wouldn't know what to do without you." 

She stroked his hair, calling on all of her tenacity to remain calm and avoid dissolving into her own tears.  With a breath of resolve, she tightened her grip on him and whispered, "'Either' doesn't weaken it.  In a strange way, it's kind of an honor to be on the same level.  I mean, he got a ten year head start."

"I love you, baby," he repeated into her shirt before rising and allowing her to wipe the corner of his eye.

"Okay.  I think I'm going to believe you," she replied with a small smile.  It fell a bit as she went on.  "I don't know exactly what this means, though.  I don't know where we go from here."

"I don't either."

"But I'm not giving you up, and you're not giving Link up."

"Neither am I."

Their eyes darted to the kitchen doorway, where Christy leaned with a surprising nonchalance. 

"Oh my god," Rhett uttered before he could stop himself.  His face disappeared into his hands.  Jessie seemed to take it in stride.  Her spirit had grown indomitable.

"Well, it's all on the table, then."

"Good thing it's a big table," Christy added, crossing to an empty chair and dropping into it. 

"You seem...unfazed," Jessie noted, cautiously sitting down across from her.  Only Rhett remained standing, hunched over in brief contemplation of whether he'd ever experienced a more uncomfortable confrontation. 

"He left his family to stay behind for a week, spending every single night in a hospital, watching Link just lay there.  I've felt it coming for a while.  And I also saw the hand holding."

"And you didn't say anything," Jessie replied skeptically.

"What's there to say?  It's not my place to tell you how you feel," she said, addressing Rhett for the first time.  "It's all fairly simple from my side.  My husband's gone, regardless of how you feel about him.  It doesn't get messy until he comes back and we find out how he feels about this."

Rhett nodded, then shook his head as he spoke, his voice still unsure of itself.  "I would never do anything to jeopardize..."

"I know," Christy said, placing her hand on his wrist and squeezing gently. "I mean, I think I know that.  I've had a lot of time to think about this since I saw you...I saw you with his hand in yours, and I just kind of felt it.  But I also realized that I'm not threatened by you, Rhett.  If he'd wanted to spend his life with only you, he'd have done it, or at least tried to.  But I know that he loves his life here.  He loves me, he loves his kids.  He'd never leave what he's built here."

"I wouldn't want him to.  I wouldn't let him," Rhett answered needlessly.

"Good.  Then I'll continue to love him from my side, and you continue to love him from yours.  And once he's back home...we'll sort it all out then."

"I'm sure there's nothing to sort out.  This is just..." Rhett rubbed his eyes, still desperate to dismiss everything and cling to the safety of his roles as _husband_ and _friend_.  "This is probably just a projection of something."

"Maybe.  Maybe your fear of losing him has tried to talk you into thinking you're in love with him," Christy offered, a knowing sparkle in her eye. 

"Yeah," he agreed.  "And even if that isn't the case, there could still be nothing to work out.  Link will just laugh this off.  He'll call me crazy and forget the whole thing."

Jessie couldn't help but grin at Christy's thoughtful expression: her eyebrows lifted in doubtful consideration as she tucked her light hair behind her ears. 

"Maybe.  So maybe you should go get this off your chest while you still have the safety of his unconsciousness.  At least then you'll have said it, even if we all learn that this was all one big misfire of your deepest emotional impulses."  It wasn't a joke that warranted a laugh, but they each smiled all the same.

"You'll feel better," Jessie added.  He straightened his back, bearing the weight of their stares, and under such pressure, he chuckled at the bizarre turn his day had taken, embracing the opportunity to escape the scene of his unparalleled embarrassment.

"Fine.  I'm off, then."

He leaned down to Jessie, eagerly accepting the chaste kiss she planted on his lips.

"Happy New Year," she said quietly.  He kissed her forehead before pulling away.

"See you next year."


	13. The Dark, pt. 1

The taste of Rhett evaporated from Link's lips, leaving them dry and cool.  He'd felt compelled to close his eyes as he leaned into Rhett, but now that the feel and flavor of the warm body had faded away, he couldn't be bothered to open them again.  The dark offered a comfort, a contentedness that begged no questions.  

The silence first enveloped him, then permeated him, slowing the rush of emotion to a halt, quieting his deepest internal voice of conscience.  He had never experienced stillness like this.  It would never have suited him in the waking world; he'd have fidgeted out of it, breaking it with some menial task or thoughtless sigh.  But here, in the soft dark, he felt safe to let it move through him, to calm the perpetual motion of his body and just let him be.

He sensed that he was alone again, and he did not mind.  Such a peace could not have been reached without this total absence of stimuli.  The sorrow, the longing, the love, it was all gone, not covered over but completely rinsed out, leaving him a colorless frame of a man, adrift in a void.  The boundaries of his body began to blur.  Here, he was not bound to his bones.  Nor was he rooted to his memories; they, along with all the quirks and contradictions that made him what he was seeped out of him into the welcoming ether beyond. 

What had come before, the visions and revelations, the coming to terms and bidding farewells, he could not explain.  A dream, a spiritual hallucination, perhaps, but not death.  His faith told him that death would be a release of his burdens, a soft place to fall where he would want for nothing and feel safe.  All that came before was frightening, confusing, and anything but safe.  If nothing else, it'd been pure thought, and thought was a sign of life. 

But this was something else.

This was timeless.  With nothing for his senses to register, there was no way to know whether hours were passing or standing still. 

In the recesses of his mind, he'd anticipated this possibility.  Whatever he'd had before was solid, an illusion with enough depth that he could have let himself sink into it and stay submerged forever.  He could have wrapped himself around that Rhett and never let go.  The prospect was appealing.  But that, whatever it was, was not real.  He never voiced his fear that letting go of that dream might mean letting go of all that tethered him to the world as he'd known it; it didn't need to be said.  But perhaps this was what made that Rhett try so hard to convince him to stay. 

It didn't matter now.  Link had made his choice: he wanted something real.

And reality was dark.  It was still and deep and unbelievably easy to settle into.  It was blissfully quiet and cradled him more gently than he'd ever been touched.  It went on forever, and he was glad to let it.


	14. Midnight

Quiet music had been playing from the small radio beneath the television for over an hour.  Rhett had sat on the bench next to it, organizing an endless list of songs on his phone, paying it far more attention than necessary.  The task occupied him, allowed him an excuse for not speaking more than a few one-sided pleasantries to Link.  He'd needed the time to catch his breath.

When he'd walked into the silent room, Link's head had fallen a few inches to the left, tilted off center as if he'd been talking to someone at his side and fallen asleep mid-conversation.  The shift made sense; the head of his bed had been elevated, propping his head, giving it ample opportunity to turn as nurses came in and checked his vitals or bathed him.  Typically, they took enough care to balance him carefully at the center of his pillow.  Finding him otherwise had caught Rhett off guard, stopping him in his tracks and causing his pulse to quicken.  He'd moved carefully to Link's side, reaching out and touching his cool arm, tensing in anticipation of a response.  He was patient, giving Link a full minute to notice the contact, until he was forced to admit that nothing had changed.  With great care, he'd adjusted the Link's pillow, re-centering his head into a more comfortable position. 

The shock had inspired him to keep his distance, fiddling with his phone for fear of looking too eager to all the eyes that were not watching.  But eventually, Rhett had to shrug off his unease, roll his eyes at himself, and move back to the recliner at Link's side. 

"I feel dumb.  That was weird.  You just...I got so excited.  I had to come down for a while," he explained softly, tugging the chair into place right up next to the bed, facing Link rather than the television.

"On the bright side, you should love this playlist.  I found all our old driving songs, and I found some of your karaoke favorites."

With heavy words on the back of his tongue, Rhett had felt himself growing more and more anxious with each passing minute.  He wanted to stare at Link, to appreciate the features that had slipped into his dreams, weaving their way into his subconscious and burrowing into the back of his mind.  He tried to look, but he couldn't hold the gaze.  Link's was a face made for moving; it was built for expression, with lips sculpted to curl and stretch in devious smiles and wicked snarls, eyes crafted to widen and narrow in surprise and scrutiny.  Without these shifts, he had become a statue, haunting in both its potential to come to life and the very notion that it could not.

Rhett settled his eyes on Link's fingers, picking them up and rubbing them delicately between his own. 

"All this time, I've been hoping you could tell I was here with you.  I've been talking to keep you company.  Maybe to make myself feel better, too.  And all of a sudden, I'm praying you can't hear a word I say," Rhett admitted, shaking his head, chancing a single quick glance up at closed eyes.

"And you know, if you _can_ hear this...when you wake up, you don't have to ask...to even acknowledge this...Just don't.  If you don't like what I'm about to say, you can do us both a favor and call this a dream."

He chewed his bottom lip and listened to the radio for a while, letting it fill the silence until his voice was ready to take back over. 

With a deep breath, he forced his eyes upward and held tight to Link's hand.

"I'm sorry it took this..."  His voice went gruff surprisingly quickly, so he cleared his throat and started again.  "I'm sorry I couldn't say it before...before all of this.  I can just...I can only hope that you've known all along."

The distance between them suddenly felt like miles over which his words could never float, so he moved to the edge of the bed, placing Link's arm in his lap and intertwining their fingers.  As heat built in their palms, he shifted again, leaning carefully at Link's shoulder to speak quietly into his ear.

"I love you, Link.  I hope you don't think I'm a coward for waiting until now to tell you.  Because _I_ do," he whispered, pushing upright again and smiling sheepishly before pressing a kiss into Link's palm. 

"I feel like I've wasted so much time, like I should have seen this so long ago.  I feel like I've been taking you for granted.  I've just assumed that you'd always be there, and seeing you every day would be enough for me to...I don't know.  That it would just be _enough._ "  He sighed, tension noticeably releasing from his shoulders as he spoke.  "I don't know what I thought.  But I know that when you come back, when you wake up, I'm going to show you how much you mean to me.  If you'll let me, I'm going to make it clear just how tied up in you I am."

He sat for a long, thoughtful pause, enjoying the feel of Link's hand in his own, a sensation he was growing more and more accustomed to, and wondering how different it might feel if Link were to squeeze his fingers in return.

"But of course," he added, recognizing that such a day may never come, "if you don't want that...you just pretend you didn't hear any of this."  Rhett sniffed and laughed at himself.  "And probably...probably, you didn't.  Let's be real."  Stroking the back of Link's hand, he shook his head wistfully.  "You'd never let me get away with saying that just once.  And," he added, turning to look into Link's face again, "I'd say it as many times as you wanted to hear it.  I'd say it over and over.  I'd repeat it until it stopped feeling so...so awkward.  And knowing you, it would take a while."

He imagined Link smiling at him, digging at his ribs in response to the verbal jab.  He imagined grabbing Link's wrists against the attack; he thought of their smiling lips meeting playfully, easily.  And then he moved back to the chair.

"I'll give you your space," he said quietly, sinking back into the recliner and extending its footrest.  With a glance at the radio over his shoulder, he added, "Almost midnight.  Another year down.  And what a ride this one's been.  I could wax poetic about all the dreams coming true, but you're the last person that needs to hear it.  You were there.  They were your dreams, too."

There was no countdown.  The television stayed off; the hallway stayed quiet.  Link had taken a particularly deep inhalation five minutes before midnight, and a minute later, his cheek twitched.  Rhett pulled a thin smile at the reflexes, and chose to accept them as Link's celebration. 

"Happy New Year, buddy."

The silence that followed crept into him, finding a gap in his armor and sinking past his ribs.  It swelled in his chest, stoking the embers of his frustration, breathing oxygen into impatient flames.  His fingers drummed on his thigh, trying to match the rhythm of whatever happy song played from the radio, but he soon found that he couldn't focus on the sound.  All he wanted to hear was the one voice that wouldn't speak to him. 

Twenty minutes into the new year, he found himself staring down his own waning stamina.  The room seemed to grow stale and dreary, and the outside world beckoned him with promises of fresh air and a cleared head.  If nothing else, he thought, he needed to escape the chafe of his confession bouncing off the walls, glancing off of Link's skin and echoing in taunting whispers. 

So, with a quick sigh and a promise to return by the top of the hour, he dropped a quick kiss on Link's forehead and fled.

 

As he walked through the sliding doors and out into the night air, Rhett felt lighter.  The burden of his secret had been lifted, for how long he could not know.  The weight had left his bones, and in looking at the crisp stars peppering the clear black sky, he tried to enjoy the relief, pretending his confession hadn't cut him loose from gravity altogether.

 

 

* * *

 

 

None of the night breezes, sweet and cool as they were, could sweep away Rhett's sense of restlessness.  His lungs treasured the moving air, the break from recycled oxygen already breathed through dozens of bodies, but his legs itched to carry him back in, up to the room he'd left half an hour before.  The further he'd moved from Link, the tenser he'd become, uneasy and irritable, avoiding eye contact with the few passersby who'd come to the cafeteria's patio to watch a fireworks show on the horizon and had yet to move back inside.  The space was bigger than it appeared from three stories up; the view from room 3110 overlooked only half of the seating area.    Rhett had found an isolated picnic table at the farthest edge of the concrete, near a rocky fountain that had slowed to a trickle.  He stretched his back, rolled his shoulders, watched headlights cross a distant road, listened to whispered conversations of the few visitors behind him.  But eventually, he just had to laugh at his pitiful state.  He knew better, but he couldn't help thinking he was missing something.

To shake the feeling, he turned back toward the building and craned his neck, counting windows until he found Link's, with a single dim light just as he'd left it, his own jacket draped over a chair next to the glass.  He found that he liked looking at it, knowing exactly where he was in relation to Link.  They'd situated their lives around each other; it was a familiar tactic for finding comfort.  He turned his body to face the building fully and dropped his chin into his hand, staring peacefully at the large window.

And just as easily as he'd found the comfort, he lost it, as he saw the shadows of two bodies moving quickly into the room.  Momentarily paralyzed, sure that he'd picked the wrong window, Rhett counted again, eyes finally locking onto the familiar dark green of his jacket as the overhead lights flashed on in the room.  His heart pounded for exactly three beats before adrenaline ignited his muscles into action, sending him scrambling across the concrete and back toward the door.

 

Blind to the disapproving glances of slower-moving people, Rhett trotted to the elevators in the lobby, willing himself not to break out in a full run.  He mashed the "up" arrow four times, swearing under his breath when none of the three cars opened immediately.  It took only five seconds of fruitless waiting for him to take off again, darting for the stairwell adjacent to the elevator shafts. 

His legs were burning by the second floor since he'd taken to moving three steps at a time, swallowing hard at the nausea threatening to slow him down.  His breath came in shallow gasps, his eyes blinking wildly to suppress panicked tears.  He was grateful for the isolation of the stairs, as it allowed him to unabashedly curse himself for being selfish enough to walk out on Link.  A small voice tried to tell him that he'd never have been able to stop whatever was happening in that room, but it was too quiet to compete with the more practiced cries of guilt and shame.

The door burst open on the third floor, flinging wildly from Rhett's rough shove.  He jogged toward the center of the floor, turning a corner and slamming into the shoulder of a tall, sturdy nurse.  She cried out in surprise and turned to look at him, grabbing his bicep as he tried to move past her with a breathless apology. 

"No, wait," she said, pulling him back, meeting the fire in his eyes with a level expression of her own.  "You're with Mr. Neal, yes?"

"Yes.  I need to—"

"You need to wait out here," she cut him off, shaking her head, daring to loosen her grip on his arm, visibly ready to spring into action again, should he take off.

"What happened?  I saw the lights go in his room.  I was outside and I saw...what..."

He tried to catch his breath as he looked into her face for an answer.  Her lips smiled faintly, but her eyes did not. It was a compassionate expression, complemented perfectly with a heavy sigh that spoke of a long wait coming to an end.


	15. The Dark, pt. 2

...And then they hit.  Lips dry and framed by thick, coarse hair connected with Link's forehead, knocking him out of the balance he'd only just achieved.  Eternity loosened its grip.

 

And all the pieces that had begun to slip apart snapped back together, bound by muscle and covered by skin that had grown prickly and warm.  He did not mind the heat; rather, he reveled in his recognition of it.  It was all the sign he needed.

 

  He was alive.


	16. Arrival

"We just don't want to over-stimulate him."

Rhett looked down into the nurse's face for a long beat, blinking repeatedly as his brain tried to process her words. 

"Your nurse, Sam, was doing vitals, and he just opened his eyes.  He's been—"

"When?" 

She closed her mouth at his interruption and squared her shoulders.  "About twenty minutes ago, I'd say.  He's coming in and out.  This could go on for a while.  Days, even.  He can't focus on anything, really.  And that's normal.  But we just want to move slowly when introducing anyone new."

"I'm not new.  _You're_ new."

"That's not..." she sighed, shaking her head and smiling at his intensity.  "Yes, I know that.  Let's just give him a minute, okay?  I'll go talk to Sam, and I'll call the doctor.  If you go down to the waiting area at the end of the hall, I'll come get you as soon as I hear back."

He stared down into her face, posture suggesting a threat.

"I promise," she added, taking him by the shoulders and turning him toward the collection of empty furniture. 

He stayed there a full seven minutes.  He paced, eyes unblinking as he stared at the floor in front of him, nearly burning holes in the short carpet with his gaze.  The circumference of his walk grew incrementally until his path took him to the end of the patients' hall.  He chanced a long glance toward Link's room, finding the door cracked, and turned around for another pass.  The second time he reached the end of his route, he traveled further, stepping out far enough to scan for familiar faces.  He saw none, so he took off down the hallway, walking as confidently as possible while internally talking down the tremble in his legs. 

At 3110, he bit his lip and pushed the door, peeking in quickly to see if anyone was sitting with Link.  At finding the visitors' chairs unoccupied, he glanced once more down each end of the hall and slipped inside, turning to close the door quietly behind him. 

He froze, staring at his own hand on the door handle, bracing himself for what waited around the corner.  His mouth pulled into a quick, tired smile, and with a roll of his shoulders, he turned back around and stepped in.

She'd tried to warn him. 

Link's eyes were closed, head balanced as carefully as ever at the center of his pillow, angled just a touch toward the door, as if he'd fallen asleep waiting for it to open.  He seemed much the same, but Rhett ached far less in looking at him.

Rhett had situated the recliner back into position, facing the head of the bed, sitting for a quiet ten minutes before the door clicked open and the tall nurse popped her head in, shaking it disapprovingly. 

"You're not supposed to be in here."

"You never came to talk to me."

She huffed a sigh.  "I _just_ heard from the doctor."

"And?"

"And he agreed that a familiar face might be comforting.  So."

"So," he shot back, his tone exasperatingly righteous.

She checked her watch before crossing to the bed, speaking quietly as she activated the blood pressure cuff on Link's arm.  "Don't try to tell him everything that's happened to him.    Once we're able to assess his ability to communicate, we'll start filling him in.  At this point, let's just answer whatever he may ask, _if_ he says anything at all. He was fairly unresponsive with the doctor earlier.  And don't ask _him_ a bunch of questions if he comes to again.  Just let him be quiet."

Rhett snorted a laugh at the notion of Link being quiet, but nodded all the same as she continued. 

"He'll have a lot to process, and he'll probably be taking in more and more every time he wakes up.  If he starts pulling at these tubes, you have to call one of us.  Use the number on the board to reach Sam directly."

"Really?  He could...freak out?"

"He could be confused.  He probably won't know why he's here right away.  He may never recover those memories.  We'll just have to see.  It's different with everyone."

"Got it.  Should I just not talk?"

"No, you can talk to him.  Keep it light.  Just don't expect much in return.  It'll be one-sided for a while.  Oh, look," she said, smiling warmly as she nodded toward Link's face.  His eyes remained closed, but his forehead knitted in a hint of a grimace.  "Maybe he'll like the sound of your voice better than mine."

Rhett hardly heard her over the rush of blood that pounded in his ears at the sight of Link's expression.  He slid to the edge of his chair, leaning forward to watch the muscles of Link's face twitching.  The nurse slipped away, closing the door behind her, and he was none the wiser. 

Time slowed to a crawl as Rhett stared into Link's face, shallow breaths coming and going in a charged silence.  He reached for a motionless hand, delicately resting his fingers over Link's before he braced himself to speak.  When it finally pushed through, his voice was high and thin, elevated by adrenaline.

"Hey, man.  You in there?  It's Rhett.  I'm here."

Link exhaled, his head turning subtly toward the voice, causing Rhett to bite back a smile as he watched Link's heart rate surge on the monitor. 

"I'm right here, buddy," he said, letting his fingers wrap more tightly around Link's.  They twitched beneath his grasp, and the butterflies in Rhett's stomach whipped into a frenzy.

Link's brow furrowed again, shading his eyes as they fluttered open.  They looked straight ahead, into the corner where the ceiling met the wall above the television, unfocused and miles away, but bluer and more magnetic than Rhett had remembered.  He wanted nothing more than for them to lower to his face, to look at him, to _see_ him.  His chest burned for oxygen before he realized he'd stopped breathing, and his inhalation came as a quiet sob, surprising him and Link both.

Link flinched at the sound, but kept staring toward the ceiling.

"Sorry," Rhett muttered, laughing at himself as he wiped away a tear that hadn't fully formed.  "I just...I'm glad to see you.  To see your eyes.  That sounds weird. Sorry.  You know what I mean.  You will," he rambled, tripping over the words that had come spilling out of him.  "Either way, at least we know you're not deaf now."

Rhett had spun his wedding band in several rotations before he realized that he'd pulled his hand away from Link's.  He frowned at the instinct, but pushed the thought away in favor of watching Link come back to life. 

"I'm not supposed to ask you questions, so...I'm just going to...It's the middle of the night, of course.  That's why it's kind of dark in here," he started, voice growing stronger by the word, the most benign thoughts he could muster pouring out in a steady stream.  "We all had dinner together, me and Jessie and Christy and the kids, and your mother-in-law.  She'd never admit it, but I think she's glad to have a reason to spend so much time with the kids.  They all worked on dinner together yesterday, apparently, so they're keepin' each other busy."

Though Rhett could not tell if there was any intent behind the motion, Link's jaw worked in a small circle, testing its joints. His eyes never left the ceiling.

"I, uh...I talked to Stevie a couple days ago.  She says hello.  Says she's excited to get everyone back together in the office soon.  Well, not in those words, I guess, but it was implied.  We all know she's a workaholic, so she doesn't really know what to do with so much time off."

His lips snapped shut as Link closed his eyes and rolled his head to more directly face Rhett.  Without knowing why, Rhett reached again for Link's hand, turning it palm-up and nesting their fingers together.

"Is this okay?  I can shut up.  I just...do you want me to keep talking?"

And after a moment of silence, perhaps spent in consideration, Link squeezed Rhett's fingers once.  It was an answer, just firm enough to complete the circuit and send a powerful jolt through Rhett.

He had to speak through a smile.

"Okay.  I can do that.  Let me tell you about this music I've been listening to..."

Rhett talked for fifteen minutes straight before testing his audience's awareness.  The first time he checked in, Link loosely adjusted his fingers in Rhett's own, confirming his presence, distant as it was.  So Rhett went on. 

After another ten minutes of telling the same camping story they'd told each other for the last ten years, Rhett squeezed Link's hand and watched his face.

"You still there?"

He felt nothing, so he let go of Link's hand and leaned back in his chair, stretching out his back. 

"That's alright.  You can sleep for a while.  I'll be here when you're ready to try again."

 

With an invisible weight lifted from his chest, Rhett found it easier to breathe, to relax into a chair that suddenly seemed more comfortable, and to doze.  He slept just deeply enough to miss hearing the nurses peek into the room every so often, slipping away with hopeful grins on their faces.  His body finally set to repairing itself, righting all the aches and sweeping away the perpetual sense of fatigue while he drifted in a dreamless peace.  It was brief and light, but more restorative than any stretch he'd had in the last week. 

His brain woke before his eyes did, so he let himself enjoy the darkness of his eyelids while he listened to the murmur of the hospital, monitors beeping in the far distance, footsteps padding across the hall every so often, quiet conversations passing between the staff as they ghosted around the floor, silently checking in on their mostly-sleeping patients.  There was a rhythm to the place that he'd only just begun to appreciate, and he allowed it to lull him into a comfortable thoughtlessness.

And when Rhett's meditation broke, it did so slowly.  It started as a hairline fracture, low in his periphery, almost undetectable.  His ease trickled away like single grains of sand.  But gradually, the disruption grew, spreading into a vivid crack before disintegrating his sense of tranquility altogether and replacing it with a more invasive feeling that took a moment of scrambling contemplation to recognize.

He was being watched.

His eyes pried open slowly, only daring to look at his own knees for a loaded moment while they adjusted to the dim light of the room.  Then, with a bracing breath, he wet his lips and raised his eyes.  They widened in excitement for just a flash before he could regain control of his face and force it into a more stoic expression, one less indicative that he'd just gotten everything he'd wanted for the last week.

If he noticed, Link gave no sign.

"Hey, you," Rhett said groggily, lowering his eyes and faking a yawn into the back of his hand.  "How long have you been awake?"

No response.

"Oh, I'm asking questions.  Sorry."  He sat up and jutted his chest out in an exaggerated stretch of his shoulders.  "That was an awesome nap.  I could use about four more of those.  I haven't been sleeping well, I think.  No, I know."

He popped his knuckles, stretched his fingers, rolled his neck, and straightened his sleeves before running out of things to look at.  He glanced up at Link's face again and felt his stomach lurch at the intensity of the gaze boring into him.

Link's eyes had narrowed just slightly, a faint crease forming between his eyebrows as he stared unblinkingly into Rhett's face.  His head stayed at rest on his pillow but seemed to want to rise in order to examine the man at his side more closely.

"You're staring," Rhett finally said, the words coming out in a whisper.  "You playin' with me?"

He leaned out of the far side of his chair, watching as Link's eyes slowly tracked him, a few inches behind.  Settling again into the backrest, Rhett smiled sheepishly.

"Sorry.  Just...wanted to see if you were..." He dropped the thought and pushed himself up, moving eagerly toward the little radio by the television.  "How 'bout we put some of that music back on?  Would you like that?" 

"Hmm."

Rhett froze mid-stride, turning to look in shock at the source of the quiet sound.  "Excuse me?" 

Link's eyes had drifted closed again, apparently tired from staring so intently at the features of his friend. 

It was in that moment, while standing at the foot of Link's bed that Rhett came face to face with his fear:  In the best case scenario, perhaps sooner than later, Link would regain his coherence. He would open his eyes and _be_ there, voice and all.  He would answer questions, talk back.  People would swarm him, doctors, family, friends.  He would come to learn them or recognize them all again, hear and tell his story when asked and prodded by his visitors.  But Rhett knew that at some point, as they often did, the two of them would wind up alone together.  And it was the prospect of this moment that sent a shiver rattling up his spine, for, as was always the case, he could not hope to predict what Link might say.

And the stakes were higher than ever.

He was not the same man Link had known in December.  He'd suffered a revelation that came on first as an allusion, growing more concrete by the day.  A window had flown open, letting him breathe air fresher than he thought possible.  And he did not know how to hide the color with which it flushed him. 

This was the chance to speak again, to try to garner a response from Link, to try for a semblance of dialogue.  But he let it pass in silence, letting Link's mind go wherever it was going, away from the room, away from the face he'd just seemed so keen on seeing.

It didn't matter, Rhett told himself.  He'd waited this long.

If asked, he'd deny it whole heartedly, claiming that he was only doing the right thing, that he would have expected the same of her, but a taunting voice at the back of his mind whispered that it was this realization of the inevitable that made him pull out his phone and dial Christy's number.  Of course she would want to know that Link had opened his eyes.  She would leave earlier than usual, if not immediately, for the hospital.  She'd coast in on adrenaline and settle between them.  Her presence could protect him.

 

* * *

 

 

 A door swung open somewhere in the distance, and Link latched on to the sound, using it to gain his bearings in what he presumed was consciousness.  The door clicked closed loudly, shocking his system with how clear and close the sound seemed.  The metallic clink matched a change in his vision, the deep and empty black suddenly lightening, growing more penetrable by the second.  He could tell his eyes had been closed for a long while.  They felt dried out and soundly shut, heavy in their submission to gravity.  But they were not glued, and with no small effort, he focused all of the attention he could muster on working them open.

As he focused on his task, the door swung again, and footsteps approached him.  A thrill of anxiety fluttered through him, but he couldn't hold onto it and quickly let it slip away as he tended to his vision.  He could hear muffled sounds of typing, of equipment moving about, rustling paperwork.  But it was the shock of cool hands on the skin of his upper arm that finally cracked his eyelids.

The only light source was behind him, dim enough to leave the corners of the room in shadow, but bright enough to light an immediate ache in newly opened eyes.  His forehead worked on its own, creasing and furrowing as he squinted.  His head turned, following the far and dampened sounds at his side. 

"Oh, my.  Hi.  Hello," a soft voice said.  It was gentle and warm, but he had to work to make sense of it.  He forced his eyes open a fraction wider and let them focus, settling on the smiling face of a small woman.  Her red hair was pulled into a tight braid over her shoulder, and for three solid seconds, his mind went into overdrive trying to place her features before it grew tired and lost interest.

"I'm Samantha, Mr. Neal.  I'm your nurse.  We haven't really met, not yet.  But if you can hear me, I want to tell you that you're okay.  You're in the hospital, and you're on the mend.  You don't need to respond."

He wasn't interested in responding.  He didn't care to try.

"I'm going to call the floor doctor, just for a quick check-in, okay?  He'll be in shortly."  Her voice warbled in his ears, grating on his nerves, even with the kindness of its tone. 

He blinked several times, trying to bring forth some soothing tears.  Each blink seemed longer than the last, until he found that the sound of the door swinging open again woke him from an accidental nap. 

Just as the petite nurse bounced into view at the foot of his bed, overhead lights flashed on, searing his already straining eyes.  They squeezed closed, and a choked sigh escaped his throat. 

"Mr. Neal, I'm Julian Klein, the floor doctor on this unit.  I have to commend your timing.  Kicking off the new year with quite the fresh start..."

He found that he much preferred the sound of Samantha's voice to the booming timbre of this man who seemed to have no regard for the effort it took just to look at the room around him.  It was petulant, perhaps, but Link could not bring himself to find interest in what the doctor had to say, so he kept his eyes closed, letting his mind travel through his body, checking in on the far reaches of his extremities, searching for points of pain and finding plenty to speak of, assessing the condition of the body to which he'd returned.  He did not flinch when other hands tested his reflexes, pressed on sore joints and asked the same question from too far away for him to care.  Nor did he try to answer.

Eventually, the loud voice faded off completely, taking with it the bright lights that had so badly hurt him.  And yet, he sensed a presence.  He took a glance upward, and found Sam smiling apologetically down at him.

"I had a feeling you were still in there.  Sorry about Doctor Klein.  He's a little...he's very good.  He's just a little...strident.  Eager to move forward, to get you back to yourself, that's all.  I'll be around, okay?  Just rest a while.  You did great." 

Her words came through a bit more clearly, and to celebrate this little victory, Link let himself drift into a dreamless sleep that felt safe, warm, and nothing like what he'd just survived.

 

A feminine voice penetrated the fog of his sleep.  This one was different, lower in pitch and less forgiving.  It was direct and flowed quickly, pushing a stream of unintelligible words past his ears until he grew frustrated with its presence and let himself frown again, again without opening his eyes.  He did not want to see what must have been a stern face.  If he was in trouble, he didn't want to watch her scold him.

As his brow knitted, her voice softened.  This sent a wave of hope and forgiveness through him, causing him to try to wade through the audible haze and listen more carefully.  Then another voice chimed in.

It was low and strained, forced out through a tight throat, but intriguing enough to turn his head toward its source. 

"I'm here."

The words were spoken quickly, and his pulse momentarily spiked to match their rhythm.  More words followed as a large hand lowered carefully over the back of his own.  He couldn't be bothered to tune in to the voice when his body so suddenly ached to be fully enveloped by the warmth now wrapping up his wrist.  The shock of it coerced his eyes open, though he couldn't make them focus.  They drifted toward the top of a far wall and remained there while he marveled at the sensation of a hand, of this particular hand, comforting and protecting him with a touch that felt entirely too isolated, too distant in its concentration on the skin of his hand. 

As quickly as it had overwhelmed him, the touch was gone.  So he spent his fragile energy trying to determine what he could have done wrong.  He pushed his resistant mind backward, trying to pinpoint the face he might have made, the wrong moment in which he may have blinked, the poorly timed sigh.  His memory had no traction; he found nothing, no reason for suffering such a loss, and yet he wanted to ask forgiveness anyway.  The best he could do was open his jaw an inch before clenching it tight, repeating the process while he tried in vain to remember the last time he'd heard his own voice.

The other one was still talking, though in stilted phrases that tested his patience.  He didn't have it in him to try to piece them together, so he let himself float in the soothing sound without worrying about making any sense of it.  In this happy resignation, he let his eyes fall closed and angled his face even closer toward this aural morphine. 

And like that, he was rewarded, the hand returning to his own, turning it over, and gripping his bent fingers tightly, securely.  Perhaps it was this physical connection that allowed him to finally understand the voice's language, just in time to hear it ask, "Do you want me to keep talking?"

He wanted nothing more, and said as much by slowly tightening his grip.  So he was gifted a softly spoken speech about some newly discovered music, a fitting subject, since the voice was so deeply melodic itself.  After vibrant descriptions of earthy and ethereal harmonies and rhythms, of the colors they inspired in their listener's mind, of the somehow perfect timing of their appearance in his life, he asked Link to confirm that he was still listening.  To buy himself more of the hypnotic speech, Link squeezed the hand in his.  And on it went.

It spoke of trips far from civilization, up mountains and through forests, a vehicle packed tight with camping supplies and sometimes driven by Link through shallow streams and up jagged, rocky hills, sometimes crossing smooth countryside with someone else's hands on its wheel.  In flickers and flashes, he could see the tires rolling, carrying him toward a rose gold sunset.  Eventually, the voice asked after his attention again, and too content in the passenger seat of the story, he couldn't bring himself to respond.

When he woke again, his eyes opened easily, naturally.  They wanted to see the space around him, and adjusted easily to the low light, taking in the sight of a wall-mounted television, an IV tree, the sink near the doorway, the bed in which he lay, his own body, complete with notably empty hands.  He wiggled his abandoned fingers and followed their direction toward the edge of the bed to a small pleather recliner and the body that, even when slumped in on itself, crowded it.

He'd seen it earlier, but only in the edges of his vision.  Looking straight at it entranced him.  He recognized it immediately, knew that the soothing voice had come from that bearded mouth, now slightly agape in a heavy sleep.  Whatever was dripping into his veins from over his shoulder had perforated his hold to inhibitions, and he found himself wanting to know how that particular facial hair might feel against his cupped palm.  He remembered how that large hand had warmed him, and he craved more of that energy, dying to watch it transfer through their connected skin. 

But he was also quite tired, so he settled for staring. 

This was fine; the face was nice to look at.  But eventually, it stirred under his gaze, telltale twitches signaling a returning consciousness.  Link held his stare, heedless of how intense his own blue eyes could feel when locked so tightly onto another.  Soon enough, the man came fully to life, glancing up at Link and starting under his attention.  Link caught a flicker of joy in his eyes before he furrowed it away.

He was all arms and legs, shifting and adjusting, stretching and doing everything in his power to avoid giving Link the thrill of eye contact.  Link didn't mind.  He studied him anyway, happily listening to the dips and peaks of his voice as he spoke slowly, yawning and trailing through what struck Link as only half-formed thoughts.  It didn't matter; he forgot them as soon as he heard them.  He found himself perfectly situated in the present, only able to process words as they were spoken.  Everything was new, sparkling with novelty and exciting.  And he sensed it, wanting to laugh at this hard-reset of his brain. 

Soon enough, though, Link was called on his wonder.

"You're staring.  You playin' with me?" he was asked lightheartedly.  He wanted to return the questioning smile being directed at him, but as this kind face started to move testingly to the side, he had to concentrate on following it.  He was compelled to keep up: the prospect of losing sight of it shot a thrill of terror through him, though it died away just as quickly at the sound of an apology from the mouth to which he'd tried to tie his focus.

"Put some of that music back on?"

Link felt a twinge in his chest.  The words had landed, striking something familiar, something he could remember from not long ago.  The recognition gripped him, anchoring him for the first time in a sense of reality.  It was not perfect, but he could not have been happier to have it.  It felt like hope.

The surge of emotion forced its way of his throat as he watched his companion stand and turn toward a radio.

 _Yes!  I want nothing more than to hear that music.  That music you told me about before, earlier, in this room, in this life.  In the real world, with real people and real sounds and real touch.  Put your music on and come touch me again!  I'm ready!_ he'd meant to say.  But he said significantly less.  And it exhausted him.  He let his eyes fall closed and trusted that he'd hear music soon enough, prayed, while he could remember how, that he'd feel a warm hand over his own again.

There was a small mercy in the sleep he'd tried to fight: at least he didn't have to feel disappointed by the silence that followed.


	17. Reconciling

 As Rhett had expected, Christy jumped at the news of Link's awakening, and she arrived at the hospital two hours after his call.  The sun had just risen, flooding the hospital room with a hazy orange glow when she pushed the thick door open and crept in, noticeably catching her breath from what must have been a brisk walk, if not an all-out run from the parking garage.

Rhett was on the cushioned bench below the television, arms wrapped around his knees.  He rose quickly to accept her excited hug.  She squeezed him tightly, holding fast for a long breath before dropping her purse on the opposite end of the bench and moving to the recliner at Link's side.

 He'd stayed asleep since his wordless utterance, shifting subtly now and then, unconsciously showing off his progress.  Christy sank into the plush chair and bit her bottom lip, peering closely at his face.

"You can just tell, can't you?" she whispered, tossing a glance in Rhett's direction.  He nodded, smiling politely until she turned back.  "He just looks...You look good, baby," she told him, taking hold of his hand.

Rhett didn't know how long they stayed like this, each watching Link, frozen in their respective positions, but it felt like hours.  He took his time, but Link eventually stirred again, sighing before his eyes cracked open, squinting into the early sunlight.  As he adjusted to the new brightness, he settled his gaze on Christy, his attention shifting from her face to their joined hands and back again.  She'd said something quiet enough that Rhett couldn't hear it, and he didn't want to.  It felt intrusive, watching this reunion, but leaving the room felt entirely too disruptive.  So, trapped on the bench, he leaned back into its corner and curled tightly in on himself, closing his eyes as he rested his head on his knees.

In doing so, he missed the expression of great concentration that preceded Link's first words.

"Hi.  Morning?"

As quiet as they were, they rang out like a starter pistol, causing Rhett's head to whip up. 

Christy smiled and nodded, wiping her eye with the back of her hand.

"Hi.  Yes, it's morning.  About 6:30, I think."

Link focused on her, watching her face for a long while, then slowly speaking again. 

"You.  You're an angel," he murmured, lazily pointing at her with his free hand, then becoming distracted by the oximeter covering his fingertip.  He examined it for a moment before bringing it to his mouth.  Christy lunged for it, pushing his hand gently back down to his side. 

"No, no.  Keep that on, huh?  We want to watch that heart work."

"Why?  Did it not?  It didn't.  I died," he said to himself, voice gaining strength without coherence.  Christy shook her head and sighed, taking his response in impressive stride.

"No, sir.  You did not die.  You are very much alive."

"I died, and you're an angel.  Have you met him?" he asked, nodding softly toward Rhett, who suddenly wished he'd gone ahead and left. 

"I'm not an angel, Link.  I'm your wife."

"I know," he replied with surprising quickness, eyes settling back on her face as his lips curled into a devious half-smile.  "I was being romantic...Christy.  Christy, my darling wife."

She covered her mouth and sighed, suppressing any display of the wild emotion that had overcome her at the sound of her name.  "Yes. That's me."

"Have you met him?"  he asked again.  Her brow twitched into a furrow as she considered what her answer might bring about.

"I have, Link.  Yes.  We've met.  We've known each other for a long time."

His wispy words had burned through Rhett's skin, settling into his stomach and causing it to churn.  He felt a tide turning against him, a sense of dread creeping through his veins as he pushed himself slowly from his place on the bench and stepped up to the foot of the bed, looking down into the face of his best friend.  They stared at each other for a heavy beat before Christy quietly cleared her throat, hoping to ease the unnatural tension.  But Link's intensity was resilient, and he could not be distracted from whatever flurry of thoughts was consuming his attention.  Rhett wet his lips as if to speak, but Link beat him to it.

"Who are you?"

The question was asked in a benign tone, with a genuine and kind curiosity that hit Rhett like a truck.  His breath escaped, was drawn out into the space between them, unwilling to return, wanting no part a life in which Link did not know him.  His knees wanted to buckle, but he staggered, catching his balance by smoothly resting his hand onto the foot rail of the bed. 

"You okay?" Christy asked from miles away.

He was, technically.  His heart was beating, his brain firing a frenzy of synapses, trying to process the one possibility he'd failed to consider beyond a fleeting, dismissive thought.  As his mind went into overdrive, his eyes fixed on Link's face, mercilessly unblinking.  And this was lucky, for this was how he caught the twitch in the corner of Link's mouth.  That was all that kept him from fleeing the room entirely.

"That's not what I meant.  I know who you are.  Sorry.  I know who you are," Link said, shaking his head at himself.  Rhett inhaled.

"Oh.  Okay," he replied slowly.  "I know you, too.  I'm Rhett."

"Rhett, yeah.  I know," Link said, nodding several times as he went back to examining his hand, clearly trying to hide his need for a reminder.   "Christy, angel.  That's Rhett."

"I know, baby.  We know each other."

"Another angel."

"Well, you know, now it doesn't feel so romantic," she admitted, leaning back into the recliner.

"Well, he watches over me," he replied, mimicking her tone.

"Well," she fired back in mock indignation, "so do I."

"I have no proof of that," he said, shrugging, then wincing at a pain in his shoulder.

"And what proof do you have for Rhett?" she asked, just happy to hear him talk, even if it was nonsense.

"He talked to me.  He talked to me about music.  Ask him."

When she looked back toward Rhett, he'd sunk back onto the bench, face drained of blood and body still recovering from the blow Link's initial question had landed. 

"Is this true?" she complied, brow furrowing in an inquisitive expression, silently asking after his wellbeing.  He feigned a grin and nodded, answering both questions.  A series of quiet beeps drew her attention back to Link, who had slipped the meter from his finger and held it in front of his face experimentally.

"Would you...come on, now," she groaned, snatching it out of his hand and slipping it over his fingertip again.  As she hovered over him, he stared at her face, a smirk growing on his lips.

"Kiss me?" he asked quietly.  She laughed and pecked him on the lips before dropping back into the chair. 

"Not sure your heart was in that one, but I can respect that.  My mouth feels...did I brush my teeth before bed last night?"

Her body went rigid, and after a beat, she deferred to Rhett, turning back to him with a subtle panic in her eyes.  He saw it and leapt to the rescue.

"Do you remember brushing your teeth?" he asked.

Link stilled, closing his eyes as he thought carefully about his night.  The work was fruitless.  His eyes popped open with his answer.  "I don't.  Ew."

"That's alright.  How about some water?" Christy asked, reaching for the yet unused plastic mug on his overbed table and heading for the sink.  As she passed Rhett, she tossed him a look of no small significance, though he couldn't interpret it quickly enough to shoot one back.

When Link took hold of the mug, he brought the straw to his lips and kept it there until half the water was gone.

"This will never do.  I think I'm hungry."  Christy put her hands on her hips, suddenly exasperated by his energy. 

"Aren't you needy..."

"When do they bring breakfast, again?" he asked, attention drifting again to the plastic on his finger. 

"Um...hmm," she answered delicately, dramatically examining the clock on the wall.  "You know, I'll just go tell someone you're ready.  Anything in particular sound good?"

He shook his head.  "No preference.  You're not just trying to escape me..." he mused as she made her way to the door.  Christy turned back and stooped to drop a heavy kiss on his forehead. 

"Don't be ridiculous.  I'll be right back.  I'm going to get myself a coffee, too.  I feel like I'm going to need it."

Seconds later, the door clicked closed, and Rhett was alone with Link.  It suddenly felt like the first time, now that Link was both conscious and communicating, and he envied Christy for having taken on her errand.  As easily as he'd been talking to Link only hours before, he suddenly felt untrusting in his words, afraid that if he let them flow freely, they would lead to disaster.  But no Link he'd ever known had done will with walking on eggshells.

"You're awfully quiet," he noted, drinking from the large mug once more before setting it back on his table.

"Sorry.  I just...I'm tired, I guess."

"You were up all night?  Talking to me about music."

"You remember that pretty well, huh?"

Link shrugged again, winced again.  "Not really.  I couldn't tell you what you said, but I recall the subject being brought up.  Why are you so far away?"

"What?"

"Come sit by me.  Or do I have to get up?"

"No, no.  Don't try that," Rhett protested, jumping up before Link could act on his idea.  "Okay," he huffed, dropping into the recliner, "I'm here."

Link turned his attention to Rhett's face, looking more closely at him than he had over night, and Rhett wanted to shrink away, to protect the confessions that he knew were painted all over him.  But he held fast, enduring the attention while he pushed at his own cuticles.

"Look at me," Link said, voice suddenly void of its lightness.  Rhett swallowed and met his gaze, withering at what he saw.

"You tryin' to place me?"

Link scoffed.  "I don't need to place you.  I know you."  He lifted his chin, silently beckoning Rhett closer, narrowing his eyes at him until he obeyed, settling carefully on the edge of the bed.  The gesture was stiff at first, Rhett reluctant to allow it, but Link persisted, taking hold of his closest hand, settling the pair on his chest, and letting his eyes fall closed.  He hummed his next exhalation, and Rhett shivered as the vibrations struck his bones.

"I _know_ you," Link repeated, breathing deeply before loosening his grip enough for Rhett to have pulled away.  He did not.  Link cracked an eyelid and arched a brow.  "You were there."

"Yeah, I was here all night," Rhett agreed, nodding.  Link smiled and shook his head, face relaxing with some unspoken memory. 

"No, no.  You were _there_."

"Okay," Rhett said, just happy to feel recognized for this brief, confusing moment.  "I was there, then."

"I know.  I was there, too.  I was there, you were there.  She was not there.  I like that she's here."

"Yep," Rhett said, leaning into the babble.

"I like that you're here, too."

"Glad to be here, buddy."

Link hummed again, enjoying too much the feel of Rhett's hand in his own.  The warmth of their touch had radiated down onto his chest, warming the fabric of his gown. 

"You feel that.  You have to feel that," he said, eyes still closed, lips pulling into a smirk.

"Feel..."

Link opened his eyes and looked directly at Rhett, barely shaking his head as he released his hand.  "Maybe you don't."  His expression said otherwise.  He was calling Rhett on something, piercing his thin veil of distance and reading him like a book.  But the intensity could not last.  His attention flitted away, newly taken by the cuff wrapped loosely around his arm. 

"Don't mess with that," Rhett said, clearing his throat as he stood and made his way back to the bench.  Link let him go, frowning at the admonishment.

"I'd like to go home."

Rhett snorted a laugh, feeling a deep guilt for sharing the sentiment completely.  "I thought you wanted to eat."

"That, too."

"One thing at a time, then."

 

 

Link seemed at home at the center of attention, entertaining Christy and Rhett with his short-lived thoughts, expressing his distaste for the liquid breakfast delivered to him not long after Christy's return.  He ate Jell-O and sipped chicken broth between his commentary on the ocean life documentary they had found on TV, never noticing how quickly Christy moved past local news stations.  At some point, someone would have to explain what had happened to the previous week of his life, but neither Rhett nor Christy were jumping at the chance. 

He'd moved to a stiff chair near the foot of the bed, facing the television and enjoying Link's chatter, but every once in a while, Rhett felt those blue eyes looking him over, and he had to will away the headache that accompanied the idea that Link was simply trying to remember who he was.

The energy could not last, though, and soon enough, with half a cup of hot tea still steaming on his tray, Link slipped off into a quiet sleep.  Christy rolled the tray away from the bed and pulled the covers up over his arms before stroking his flattened hair.  As she sat back in the recliner, she shook her head and choked back a fresh wave of tears.  Rhett turned to look at her, the question on his face.  She smiled and rolled her eyes at herself.

"It's just...he's a mess, but he's here," she whispered, beaming.

"He's a mess, alright.  They're going to strap those hands down if he doesn't stop that fidgeting," Rhett replied quietly.  They laughed softly and sighed together.  Rhett was watching Link's face, so he didn't noticed Christy wring her hands before she spoke again.

"You'll come back to him.  I mean, if he remembered me, heaven knows he'll remember you."

"He told me he did.  While you were out, he said he knew me."

"You don't believe him."

"I don't know.  He seems a little...off.  But, no, I'm not worried," he lied, exhaling as he pushed himself up. 

"You must be exhausted."

He nodded, stretching his back before reaching for his jacket on the bench.  "I didn't realize it until he got quiet.  But yeah, I'm going home for a while.  I guess it'll be pretty exciting from here on out, huh?"

"Not too exciting, I hope," she replied, standing and crossing to send him off with a hug.  He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and endured the rush of sympathy her touch conveyed, letting it say all that her words could not.

 

Fourteen hours later, Rhett had made it home, eaten two meals with his family while sharing a generous selection of details regarding Link's recovery, and promised his kids a visit as soon as the doctors agreed it was a good idea.  He'd fallen asleep watching a movie, moved to their bedroom at his wife's request, and fallen asleep again within seconds of hitting his pillow.  A quiet rainstorm kept him under, hypnotized his attention away from the ache that had settled into his chest.  It was only as Jessie slid into bed next to him that he stirred out of the comfortable blackness of sleep, groaning as he came back to the world. 

"You're nocturnal," she said, soothingly scratching his scalp.  He raised his eyebrows and turned to face her.

"Sorry," he sighed, propping his head on his hand.  "I was a bum today."

"You had an exciting night.  And an early morning.  It's okay.  I'm glad he's back.  I can't wait to go see him."

"He's...he's not quite right yet."

"That's what Christy said, too.  She just called me on her way home." 

Rhett said nothing for fear of interrupting her update.

"Said they saw the floor doctor.  His doctor comes in tomorrow morning.  Said they'll watch him for another day or two and start talking rehab.  Apparently, he doesn't need it."  She laughed quietly, shaking her head as she recounted Christy's story.  "Or so says the man who still doesn't seem to know why he is where he is.  Go figure.  But he stayed in good spirits all evening.  Gave her permission to go home, after asking her to help him brush his teeth so he could get a real kiss.  What a character."

"I mean, he was something.  He was like this...amplified version of himself.  Twitchy, distracted.  Couldn't leave things alone."

"The babbling brook to your still waters."

"Ha."

"Give him some credit.  He's been conked out for a week.  I mean, he smashed his head against a tree."

Rhett shook his head at her flippancy, but grinned anyway, appreciating her saving it for Link's return to consciousness.  "I know."

"So you didn't say anything.  You didn't tell him."

Rhett collapsed onto his back, covering his eyes with his forearm.  Jessie curled into him, stretching her arm across his stomach and pulling tight.  She tickled his ribs for an answer.

"Yes, yes," he grunted, flinching against her touch.  "I told him.  I said it."

Her immediate response was stunned silence.  Then, curiosity.

"And what did he say?"

"He wasn't awake.  It was before he came to."

"Oh.   Okay.  You couldn't have known, I guess.  But now that you do...I mean, it kind of feels like cheating.  You got away with—"

"Can we not?"

"Okay.  I mean, you're the one torn up over this.  You had all this mess you needed to say, and there he was, bright eyed and bushy tailed.  A little spacey, maybe, but—"

"He didn't know who I was," Rhett blurted out, pulling his arm away to stare blankly into the ceiling, demanding an answer from it that he would never receive.  Instead, he heard a quiet, "Oh."

If any other questions had arisen, they went unspoken until an uneasy sleep settled over the room.

 

 

 

As the golden glow of Sundays hardened into the stark light of Mondays, upturned lives righted themselves and set back about their designated paths.  The openness of the weekend gave way to a more rigid schedule and predictable series of tasks needing doing, steps needing taking.  And for Rhett, this meant a sense of relief.  The gravity had returned to his world now that Link was sleeping and waking on his own, talking and eating, seeing doctors and charting the course that would bring him home.  He'd be busy, Rhett knew, with tests and talks of therapy, entertaining Christy as she tried to keep all of his medical accoutrements connected to his body.  Rhett had done his part, standing watch and ensuring that when Link woke up for the first time, he was not alone.  He easily talked himself out of feeling guilty for finding work around the house that had been abandoned for the last two weeks.  He flitted from a leaking faucet in the hallway bathroom to the rattling vent in the kitchen, organizing his toolboxes in the garage somewhere in the middle, eyes glazed and distant as he threw himself into his projects.  All the while, his phone pinged in short bursts, text messages coming in and going unchecked.  They were casual updates, he knew; Christy had promised to call with any major news.  So he saved them, choosing to isolate his attention to the realm of his home, on the inanimate objects he could actually control.  The house's smaller bodies kept their distance out of fear of interrupting his intense focus.  Even Jessie, who couldn't quite conjure the right words to say, left him to his distractions until the day had slipped through all of their fingers, and they reunited at the dinner table.  Talk was light, but scarce, as the boys chattered about their newest games and groaned at the prospect of starting school again.  Rhett offered a few passing comments, half-hearted reminders that they all went back to work after the New Year, that they always did.  He reminded them that even people who love their jobs usually don't want to end their vacations.  He cut himself off before reminding them of how lucky they were to have a routine to go back to, before going so far as to admit that he wanted nothing more than to go back to work like normal, to spend eight hours a day writing and laughing and arguing and creating with the other half of his duo.

But the thought had struck and stayed, gnawing at him through the remainder of the meal, through clearing the table, through finding a movie to play as they settled in for the night, until finally, he peeked at his phone and let the shame trickle in. 

Eight messages awaited him, six from Christy.  He opened her thread and scrolled to the top, reading them in the order they arrived.

9:46: _Confused this morning.  Recognized me, didn't know my name.  Ate full breakfast! Napping now._

11:03: _Woke up, knew my name, pulled BP thing off his arm. RN says he can keep it off, but this feels like rewarding bad behavior. :)_

2:11: _Slept for a bit after lunch, woke up not speaking, just staring.  RN says not to worry.  Yeah right._

4:00: _Talking again.  "Where's my friend?"_

4:24: _Wants to talk to the guy in white. Not the Dr., apparently, so IDK what that means.  Thoughts?_

5:00: _On my way out, with permission.  Woke up from a short nap.  Things he remembered: he is in hospital, he hit his head.  Things he didn't remember: eating breakfast, brushing teeth (we did, twice), asking for man in white (which he did a lot).  Wish you'd text me back.  When do I say to expect you back?_

With his family's eyes on the television, Rhett shook his head at himself and started typing, undeniably heartened by being asked after, even if only once. He didn't mind that his name escaped Link; he'd happily remind him, making him repeat it until it stuck. 

_Sorry, missed your last messages.  Going to staff meeting tomorrow AM.  Come to visit right after. Back to school tmrw, can't hang around house anyway. :)_

Christy's response came quickly; she'd already arrived back home.  _Good.  Tentative plan is moving Wed.  Down to Prov. St. Joe.  Then home!  If you're going tomorrow, I'm waiting until evening._

At this news, Rhett felt his chest lighten even more.  His hope was timid and burning low, but burning all the same.

 

By 11:30 the next morning, he had left the staff meeting, having settled on a plan for postponing the start of the new season.  A handful of ideas had been proposed, each light and colorful in its own way.  The decision wound up in Stevie's hands, though, as Rhett had proven too distracted and therefore too agreeable to make a choice.  Everything had sounded good because picking any one of them meant he could feel okay in leaving for the hospital.  And leave he eventually did, taking with him a variety of well-wishes and comically childish homemade cards.  They were packed with a thermos of tea and a bag of dried fruit into a canvas bag that he wore on his shoulder as he stepped into Link's room for the first time in two days.

Rhett could not have said what he'd wanted to find, but he stiffened when he saw that Link was awake, sitting up in his bed and flipping through a year-old edition of _GQ_.  He would have no time to ease into the encounter; Link was wide eyed and waiting. 

As Rhett dropped the bag on the bench, Link closed his magazine and narrowed his eyes at him.  Christy had brought his glasses, and Rhett couldn't help but smile at the sight of them. 

"Hey," Rhett said quietly, lifting his hand in an awkward wave.

Link said nothing, but had more focus in his gaze than Rhett had yet to see.

"Got the ol' _Gentlemen's Quarterly_ , huh?  Learning about how style yourself like the savvy businessman you always wanted to be?"

Link's eyes traveled down Rhett's body and quickly snapped back up, making him look down at his own sweatshirt, faded jeans, and unlaced sneakers.

"Fair point," he said, sliding the recliner into his favorite place, facing the head of the bed. 

"I know you," Link said, pointing at him.  "You're going to introduce yourself, like everyone does, but you don't have to."

"Everyone keeps introducing themselves, huh?" Rhett said, trying to take the edge off Link's tone.  In response, he sank back against his pillow and shook his head. 

"Every time.  I'm not an idiot."

"Oh, no one thinks that," Rhett said quickly, thoughtlessly reaching toward Link.  He caught sight of his own hand mid-air and dropped it to his lap with a thud.  "Do you know where you are?"

"I hit my head at Big Bear.  I'm in San Bernardino."

"Both true."

Link bowed his head, proud of his achievement. 

"Do you know how long you've been here?"

The bow straightened, Link's face flat.  "Years.  Decades, even.   I grew up here.  I don't think I've ever been anywhere else."

Rhett grinned.  "I take it you're ready to leave."

"I'm ready to leave."

"Soon, brother.  Have you gotten out of bed?"

"I don't know if I can move my legs," Link sighed.  Rhett scowled, crossing his arms.

"Have you tried?"

At the question, Link's knees bent, forming peaks in the beige blanket draped over them. 

"Guess I can."

Rhett laughed to himself and shook his head.  Too bemused to keep it in, he asked under his breath, "Who are you?"

"I'm the man of your dreams," Link answered, arching an eyebrow confidently, sapping Rhett of his smirk.

"Excuse me?" he shot back, fighting to keep his voice level.

"You said as much.  Or something like that."

Rhett took a deep breath and let his eyes drop to his tingling hands, watching his palms start to sweat.  "I did..." It was not a question, but Link didn't seem to notice.

"Yeah.  In that room, that white room.  Everything was white.  _You_ were in white.  You threw me down the mountain, and then you told me you love me.  And then..." he drifted off into a low chuckle, eyes going distant with some private image. 

Rhett sensed the rift in reality, knew that this was not the same Link that he had known ten days ago.  He suddenly felt like he was talking to a character, and he couldn't help but explore it.

"And what did _you_ say?"

Link furrowed his brown as he thought.  "I don't know."

Rhett frowned.  "Oh."

"I was dead."

"No, you weren't.  You never died, Link."

Link picked and scraped unnecessarily at his fingernails as he spoke.  "I thought I did.  You were in white.  You were an angel."  His lips clipped closed as a memory came crashing back.  He locked onto Rhett, eyes conveying a momentary uncertainty as he tried to read Rhett's face.  Rhett feared the worst under the gaze of those blue eyes, bracing himself for whatever Link might have to say next.  When he did not speak, Rhett sighed and dared to ask a bolder question.

"You can answer honestly.  You won't hurt my feelings," he said softly, holding Link's gaze.  "Do you love me?"

Link shrank in on himself, expression darkening as the words hung in the air between them.  His visceral reaction sank between Rhett's ribs like a hot knife.

"Link, I'm sorry.  I shouldn't have—" Rhett's backpedaling ground to a halt as Link raised his palm.  He lowered it slowly, touching the fabric of the blanket, examining it with his fingertips before directing his attention to the white band around his wrist, reading his own information from it.  His teeth sank into his bottom lip as his gaze wandered around the room.  It wasn't until he finally looked back into Rhett's eyes that Rhett realized he'd been holding his breath.   

"I'm going to ask you a question.  And I need _you_ to answer _me_ honestly.  I'm serious."    He did not blink as he spoke, holding Rhett rapt in his fixed gaze and waiting for a nod of understanding before continuing.  Rhett gave it slowly, eyebrows drawing together at the sudden serious turn their talk had taken.  With no small effort, Link pushed himself forward, sitting up independent of the angled backrest of his mattress.

Finally, he asked, in a quiet, practiced voice, "What day is it?"

He inhaled, bracing himself for Rhett's answer and flinching when it was preceded by a laugh.

"Oh, man," Rhett said, relieved to hear what he considered such a simple question. "Well, Link, it's Tuesday.  It's January third."

Link looked away, the answer surprising but not displeasing him.  "Tuesday.  It's Tuesday.  You're sure?"

"I'm positive."  Rhett pulled his phone from his pocket and unlocked the screen, handing it over and tapping the date in the corner.  "See?"

Link stared down into the screen for a beat before touching it for himself, grinning when it responded to his fingertips.  He opened the calendar and widened his eyes at all the appointments Rhett had marked in various colors.  He did not bother to read them; rather, he simply smiled at some unspoken confirmation and handed the phone back over.  Rhett took it, but before he could pull his hand away, Link grabbed his wrist and pulled.  The tug had little muscle behind it, yet Rhett still flew from his place in the chair and heeded the wordless command, wrapping his arms fully around Link's back and swallowing hard when the gesture was returned.  Link rested his head against the crook of Rhett's neck, moving with him as he bent to sit on the bed, allowing them to pull each other even tighter. 

Rhett let himself smile against Link's bony shoulder.  He'd expected to have to explain where the last week had gone, but did not dare question Link's swell of happiness at his simple answer. 

Tuesday had always seemed one of the more colorless days of the week.  Now it was his favorite.


	18. Movement

They'd started to laugh, having embraced for over a minute.  As they looked out over each other's shoulders, Rhett felt Link tighten his grip, as if searching their contact for an answer.  When it didn't come, he chuckled to himself, and Rhett felt the awkwardness tremble through him.  He pulled back and ran a hand through his hair, sighing heavily, contentedly. 

"I've been out for a while, then," Link said, mostly to himself as his right fingertips gently kneaded his left shoulder.  Rhett nodded and scrunched his nose in reluctant confirmation.

"Yeah...yeah, you have.  Do you want to talk about what happened?"

Link sank against his pillows, letting his hand graze the length of Rhett's arm as he slid back. 

"I told you.  You threw me down a mountain.  I hit my head."

"You really think I pushed you?" Rhett asked.

Link squinted at him. "I did fall.  I did hit my head on a tree."

"Yes.  Both."

"Maybe I dreamed you pushing me."

"That's awful.  Why would you think I'd do that?  I'd never even—"

"I don't know.  It's alright.  It didn't happen.  We'll call that a dream."

Rhett agreed, but felt no less shaken by the suggestion that he might be able to do something so cruel to Link.  Or that Link would ever think him capable of it. 

Link tried to appear unfazed, but Rhett could see in the faint crease forming between his eyebrows that he was losing himself in thought.

"You remember anything else?" he asked, hoping to distract Link from whatever troubled him.

He hummed a neutral response before closing his eyes.  "I don't know.  I feel kind of..." he shrugged and made a face suggesting befuddlement before going quiet.  Rhett squeezed his hand before moving back to the recliner.

"If you want to talk about it, I'm here." 

"I don't have the words yet.  I'll let you know." 

He did not reopen his eyes for a long while.

 

When he did, he was different.  He wore a permanent smirk; his eyes had gone a bit dark.  He did not look at the things around him; he looked through them.  And Rhett felt like he was no exception.

"Hey," he said quietly, having relaxed into a light nap of his own.  Link cocked his head to the side.

"Hey yourself.  Rhett."

Rhett flinched as his heart skipped a beat.  His back straightened, and he slid to the edge of his chair, brightening and zeroing in on Link. 

"Hey," he whispered again, waiting for Link to say anything at all. 

"Put your music on."

Rhett felt his head tilt in surprise.  "What?"

"All that stuff you were telling me about the other night.  I want to hear it."

"Um—"

"Oh, wait.  No.  Did I dream that too?" Link asked, a sparkle in his eye that said he knew this answer.

"No, you didn't dream that.  I can play something," Rhett agreed, standing slowly and making his way to the radio.  As he plugged in his phone, Link sighed, increasing the angle of his bed until he sat upright.  His legs slid with no small effort to the edge of the bed, and he exhaled as he let them dangle off the side, closing his eyes at the feel of his knees bending so drastically. 

Rhett glanced at him from the corner of his eye, opting to keep as cool and un-patronizing as possible.  He wanted no further taste of Link's defensiveness.

"You makin' a run for it?"

"Ha.  Just working my unparalyzed legs.  My back is starting to hurt from that bed. Must be why they told me to start moving around."

When a quiet guitar melody came through the small speakers, Rhett set his phone on the countertop and stepped over to the back of the recliner, pulling it into a more perpendicular position to the bed, asking, "You want to move into the chair for a while?  You allowed to do that?"

When Link nodded, Rhett shuffled to the other side of the bed, grabbing the IV tree and rolling it around the perimeter of the bed, planting it next to the chair so that Link felt safe to move.  He had ducked in next to Link, letting cool arms wrap around his neck before he even recognized what he was doing.  His back had already straightened, pulling Link up to his feet with a quiet grunt, when he saw the act for what it was and made every effort to look anywhere but down into Link's face. 

But Link was not having it.  He froze, pretending to catch his breath and leaning into Rhett's chest, letting their bodies lean into each other for the second time. 

"You ready to move?" Rhett asked, palm stretching across the small of Link's back to help him balance. 

"And what if I'm not?"

"Link."

"Rhett."

Stalemate.  Link hung onto Rhett's neck with impressive endurance, staring up at him until he felt no choice but to look back. 

The angle seemed familiar; looking down into those mischievous blue eyes, he couldn't make the closeness feel unnatural.  It was easy to let the room and circumstance fall away, easy to picture himself holding Link in place with an arm firmly around his back and closing the distance between their lips, dipping into a kiss first tentative, then certain and consuming. 

But he did not.  He held fast, sharing a single breath between them before turning his attention to moving Link to the chair.  The typically lithe body bent and shifted stiffly until it had settled back into the chair fully.  Link closed his eyes for a moment and enjoyed the change of location.  Rhett sat on the edge of the bed, watching his face and smiling when Link finally looked back at him and grinned.

"That was good.  Easy.  There is hope for me yet."

"Good.  Good to hear," Rhett replied, running his palms over his thighs, wiping away traces of sweat.  Though Link's breathing was more labored, his gaze was no less penetrating.  It bore into Rhett until he finally met it and frowned. 

"What?"

Link's brow flicked upward.  "You're thinking. You're not talking, but you're thinkin' something."

"When did you get so perceptive?"

"Not much else to focus on.  What is it?"

Rhett sighed and shook his head, trying to shrug away the traces of heat Link's body had left on his. 

"You remember what we were talking about before you fell asleep?  Before I told you what day it was?"

Link's eyes fell, his face softening as he scratched his jaw and thought. 

"I asked you a question..." Rhett prodded, aching at the notion of losing that moment and its conversational trajectory.  It had been uncomfortable, asking for a clear answer, seeking out Link's deepest feelings when he may not have recognized them himself.  But the prospect of starting over seemed to hurt worse.

"Ask it again," Link finally said, lifting his head, face devoid of any guilt.  "It'll come back.  Just ask it again."

Rhett sighed and slumped over, burying his face in his hands.  It felt appropriate that he was the one on the hospital bed now, since Link seemed bent on wounding him.  He swallowed hard and shook his head, quickly talking himself into believing that, if this all went wrong, there was still hope that Link might forget it altogether.  The notion was quickly becoming a safety net, emboldening him when little else could.

"I asked you if you loved me."

Link laughed; Rhett blanched.  He wanted to run, but anchored himself to the bed until Link finally spoke again.

"Rhett.  What kind of question is that?"  he asked, rolling his eyes and dropping his head confidently against the backrest.  "How many times do you need me to say it?  We covered this.  I do love you.  Of course I do.  You have to stop worrying about taking up my time.  It's your time, too.  It's ours.  I'll never regret spending it with you."

Rhett blinked several times, trying to process Link's words.  They made a faint, convoluted sort of sense, and he gripped tight to what little logic he could. 

"Okay.  I guess I needed to hear it one more time.  Do you...do you remember what we were talking about?"

"After you threw me down the mountain."

"I didn't push you, though.  That didn't happen.  But then what?  The white room?"

Link nodded, indulging Rhett.  "Right.  After you _didn't_ push me to my death, which wasn't my death, after all..." He laughed to himself, but he laughed alone.  "After that...oh, remember?  You showed me that picture.  It was right next to the one from college, from that house party we went to.  At Kimball's house?  You remember that?"

His attention had veered, taking him on a detour that set Rhett's heart pounding.  He nodded his silent response, signaling Link to continue.

"We got stupid drunk.  Dangerous drunk.  And that should have been the first time I realized what we were, but I was too young, and too stupid, and too distracted by the chance to kiss you."

"Wait, what?" Rhett interjected, hardly fazing Link.

"And so we, I don't know, 'made out'?" he laughed at the term, pushing his glasses up and ignoring Rhett's wide eyes and downturned lips.  "I mean, how much more obvious does it get?  Oh well."

"Link...that—"

"But that's not the point.  The point is, after that, and after your wedding..."

"My what?"

"And after that award thing.  The Stream...Streamer..."

"The Streamy Awards," Rhett interjected, without really knowing what Link meant.  He'd gone off the rails, and Rhett didn't have it in him to correct the course.

"Streamy thing," Link trailed, laughing to himself.  "There isn't much of a question left, I'd think.  Yeah, I'm pretty sure I love you.  And you love me.  And there it is."  He sighed, relieved to have addressed it, before arching an eyebrow and adding, "What isn't obvious is why you're giving me such a wide berth.  I mean, am I that gross?  When _was_ the last time I showered?"

Rhett shook his swimming head, sitting in silence lest Link continue his nonsensical monologue.  When the question stood, Link cocked his head and snapped his fingers in Rhett's direction, smiling when Rhett flinched.

"What's with you, man?"

Rhett shook his head for the hundredth time and ran a hand over his face, realizing that it was warm with blood rising in his cheeks.

"I don't know.   Sorry.  I don't know when you bathed last."

"Will you help me take a shower?" Link asked without missing a beat.  Rhett frowned.

"Christy will be back later this afternoon—"

"So it'd be nice if I was clean."

"You sure you don't want a nurse to..."

"To what?" asked a third voice as it accompanied a light knock on the door.  A broad shouldered, middle aged nurse stepped in with no bounce to her step as she crossed to the bedside computer and started typing away.  Rhett slipped off the bed and padded back to the bench, removing himself from their conversational path. 

"Wait.  Can I scan your bracelet?" she asked, reaching across the bed as he lifted his wrist.  "Confirm your birth date for me."

"June first, 1978."

"You're not supposed to be out of bed without permission."

"Oh," Link said, voice lacking any surprise.  Rhett dropped his face to his hands and groaned.

"Dang it, Link."

"You helped him, I assume?" she asked, trying to hold a straight face.

"I didn't know.  He said he was told to move."

She laughed quietly and shook her head in admonishment at Link, who simply shrugged.  "You never got those instructions.  You have rehab to do before you're cleared to move around by yourself.  So, let me ask, how bad did it hurt?"

"It didn't hurt.  It was tiring, but I'm fine."

"Okay," she said, typing furiously as he spoke.  "This is absolutely not how we wanted to do this, but we can work with this."

"I'm leaving tomorrow, anyway."

"Well, you're transferring."

"Maybe I'll walk," he joked, eyes widening playfully at the idea.  She laughed.

"I doubt it very much."

"Well, I'd like to be clean, anyway.  Can I take a shower?  He's going to help me," Link added, nodding toward Rhett, who stared at the floor.

She sighed.  "I doubt that, too.  We can do a sponge bath, definitely."

"No, it's not the same thing.  I want a shower.  There's a seat, isn't there?  There always is.  I can sit."

"Yes, there's a seat in there.  I'll talk to the doctor.  Don't do anything until then."

"Deal," he agreed.  She began slipping on blue latex gloves as she stepped toward the chair. 

"I came in here to take out your IV.  We're making you wireless.  But so help me, if I find out you got in that shower, I'll put this thing back in so quick.  And I'll use the biggest needle I have."

Link stretched his arm onto the thin armrest, smiling at her threat.  "Cross my heart."  Altered though he may have been, Link still did not have the stomach to watch the removal of his IV.  He stared up into the corner of the room instead, blind to Rhett's gaze as it had settled on his face.  The nurse worked quickly, deftly peeling away the clear bandages and removing the thin tube without causing so much as a wince.  She taped a small, fresh bandage over the site and gathered the discarded ones, rolling the tree away with her as she returned to the computer. 

"Can I get you anything?"

"Just permission to shower."

"I'm on it.  Don't move again without telling someone."

"Even back to the bed?  What if I get tired?  I have to wait—"

She looked in Rhett's direction.  He nodded gravely and replied,  "Got it."

She disappeared without another word, and Link rubbed the back of his newly tubeless hand. 

"That's a step in the right direction," he mused before glancing over at Rhett, finding him sitting straight up with his arms crossed tightly over his chest.  They looked at each other for a long pause before Link finally spoke again.

"You mad?"

"You're somethin' else, you know?  Ropin' me into that."

"I'm fine.  I'm not made of glass.  I won't get better just layin' there.  Come on, let's go back to talking about how much you love me."

"Oh," Rhett scoffed, fighting the urge to laugh at Link's amplified directness.  "Is that what we were talking about?"

"Who knows anymore?  I get distracted," Link drawled, releasing the recliner's footrest and leaning back in a feline stretch as he spoke.  "But what I do know is that I'd really like you to come back over here."

"Come on, now.  There's nowhere to sit," Rhett protested, his voice tight as he predicted where this conversation ended.

"You don't have to sit.  You don't have to stay.  Just come here.  Or I'll come to you."

Rhett stood up and pointed sternly at Link.  "Don't threaten me."  The reproach only inspired a devious smile from Link.   

"Don't make me.  Just come here." 

The words made them magnets, opposites in their levels of confidence, inextricably drawn together.  Rhett approached him slowly, cautiously, eyeing his hands for any indication that he might reach out grab him.  It didn't matter; Rhett would have let him.  The glow of Link's eyes had put him under.  He longed for instruction, for the freedom not to choose, for the release that came with manipulation.  Link was happy to oblige. 

"Put one hand here," he ordered soothingly, pointing to the left armrest, "and put the other here," patting the right.  Rhett did not bother glancing toward the door this time; he did as he was told, and leaned over Link, framing him in long arms, fingers tightly gripping the slick armrests, long legs straddling the footrest.

Link's eyes narrowed with his inspection of Rhett's face; his lips quirked into a half-smile.  Rhett closed his eyes and let soft fingertips graze over his cheekbones, across the angles of his jaw, unknowingly returning the touch he'd delivered only a few days before.  They traced through his beard, scratching gently, before wrapping around the back of his neck and pulling with just enough force to bring him forward, connecting their mouths in a surprisingly delicate kiss.  They had barely united, their lips brushing airily against each other, and it drove him mad.  This could never be enough.  He instantly wanted more.

Rhett sighed against the teasing, held himself back from pushing Link further into the back of the chair, directly straddling his lap and wrapping his fingers tightly around his jaw to stabilize him against the onslaught waiting in the form of a lump in his own throat.  He squeezed his eyes closed even tighter, waiting for mercy.  Instead, he felt sharp teeth nip at his lower lip before it was pulled in between Link's own.  The fingers at the back of his neck turned to claws, pulling him down, forcing his face into fuller, warmer contact with Link's short stubble.  Then, with a single swipe of his tongue across Rhett's lip, Link let him go, leaning back in his chair and chewing his lip with a sexiness Rhett would have never thought possible from a man in a hospital gown.

Rhett straightened, catching his breath and running a hand through his hair.  He said nothing, but his eyes screamed of the confusion swirling through his body.

"Not so bad.  Maybe even better than before," Link remarked coolly, further unnerving Rhett.  His stomach flipped before he found his voice.

"You...you remember that?"

Link balked.  "You kidding?  It was hilarious.  I just sat there, not moving."  He laughed, missing Rhett swallow hard.  "But then...oh, then.  Then we just...hmm..." His eyes closed as a smile of satisfaction spread across his face.  "Then we _moved_.  Mmm..."

Rhett turned toward the bench, pressing his fingers into his eyebrows, trying to decipher Link's memory.  His effort was interrupted by the door cracking open and the nurse poking her head through.  A fresh wave of anxiety rolled through him as how lucky their timing had been.

"He still here?" she asked Rhett.  He nodded toward the chair as she stepped into the room, rounding the corner with a shake of her head as Link looked up at her from his place in the chair, eyes wide and beaming innocence.

"I got a hold of the doctor.  Let me first say that I, personally, don't believe in rewarding your behavior."

Link smiled knowingly.

"But he says as long as you have someone with you, you're good to shower now that you're all disconnected.   You have all the towels and soaps you need in there.  There should be a clean gown folded beneath the sink.  Use the seat, let that showerhead do all the work.  It moves all over.  If you need any help, _any_ help, just pull the cord in there, and I'll be right there."

Rhett found himself nodding along to her instructions, which seemed the polite thing to do, since by the end of them, she was talking directly to him. 

"Alright, then, gentlemen.  I'll be back in a while to check on you, unless you need anything before then.  I'm a call away."

Link thanked her entirely too sweetly as she walked out.  With the closing click of the door, his eyes snapped back to Rhett.

"Let's do this before I lose my energy."

And with that, Rhett was thrown back into Link's space with little time to catch his breath.  He leaned over the chair again, saying nothing as he took Link's glasses and placed them on the table before helping him wrap an arm around his shoulder.  Once securely fastened to Rhett's side, Link took three tentative, shuffling steps toward the bathroom door at the corner of the room, stopping to catch his breath and suppress a wince as his muscles stretched and tightened in new ways.

"You okay?" Rhett asked quickly.  The question had an obvious tremor to it that made Link smile. 

"I'm fine.  I'm good.  Just...feelin' a little old all of a sudden."

"You're doing great," Rhett said, tightening his grip on Link's waist as they began to move again.  They reached the bathroom, an entirely open space with a white curtain that could be pulled into a makeshift shower stall.  Link gripped the metal bars attached to the tile walls and let Rhett lower him onto the seat, scrunching his nose at its cool surface. 

Rhett detached the showerhead, pointing it at the floor as he found the perfect water temperature, and Link lifted his hands to his collar, carefully untying the fastening strings of his gown at the back of his neck.  He reached for the bow tied at his side and groaned. 

"Can you get that one?  It kills my shoulder."

"Yeah.  Here," Rhett answered, handing the showerhead over.  Link took it, carefully dropping it into the corner of the shower, pointing its stream away from their feet.  Behind him, Rhett quickly cracked his knuckles in an attempt to steady his fingers, then started working at the loose knot, watching them tremble anyway.

When it came untied, he slid his hands beneath the fabric, pushing it down Link's arms as he extended them, letting it unwrap from around his body and fall away easily.  Rhett's fist balled into the fabric when his eyes landed on Link's back.  A fierce bruise discolored his left shoulder blade, fading into a green and purple inkblot as it trailed up to the base of his neck. 

"Oh my god, Link.  Your back..."

"What about it?" he asked, head turning slightly toward the voice. 

"No wonder it hurts.  It's bruised like crazy."

"I'm not surprised.  Must have taken the brunt of the fall.  Could be worse."

"I guess that's true."  Rhett sighed and stepped back, turning his face away from the body in front of him.  "Alright.  Let me get a washcloth here..." 

Rhett devoted his full attention to his duty: he stepped beyond the curtain and grabbed a bleached white cloth from the small wall cabinet and wet it in the sink.  He peeled open the paper-wrapped soap and rubbed it into thick suds in the cloth, ignoring a barrage of impulses that told him to let Link relax, to let the healthy body work for the healing one.  A quick glance in the mirror reminded Rhett of who he was, and he tried to shake the thought off.  But it clung to his back, and as he approached the edge of vinyl stall again, Link must have glanced up and seen it.  

Rhett avoided eye contact as he handed the cloth over, busying himself by reaching for the showerhead, preparing to hand it over when Link needed it.  He stared at the metal hose in his hand, but in his periphery he could see the contrast of fair and damaged skin shifting slowly and deliberately, an accent of white trailing up and down wet arms, leaving thin soapy tracks in its wake. 

Link started to scrub his chest, then chuckled, stopping to peel two leads from his skin.  He handed them off to Rhett without a word.  They were small in his palm, but Rhett felt their weight, their connection to Link's brush with something heavy and final.  He tossed them into the trash can, glad to see them go.

When he turned back, Link had stopped moving, focusing instead of breathing, right hand gripping the handrail tightly. 

"You okay?" Rhett asked.  Link laughed heartlessly at himself.

"This is exhausting."  He could barely speak over the sound of water pounding on the tiles at his feet.

"Oh," Rhett replied, shifting his weight, unsure of what to say. 

"Would you...can you just get my legs?  My back does not want to bend that much."  At Rhett's initial silence, he shook his head.  "You can say no.  That's okay."

"No," Rhett answered quickly, startled into action.  "I can do that.  It's fine.  Take this?"

He handed off the showerhead, letting Link rinse himself as he grabbed a spare towel, folding it and dropping it on the dry side of the drain. Rhett lowered to his knees in front of him as Link dropped the showerhead back into the corner.  He rested his arms modestly in front of him and leaned his head back against the cool wall, letting his lower half go limp in Rhett's hands.

Rhett started at left his thigh, dragging the scratchy fabric softly down toward his knee, moving in careful circles around a few faint scratches and nearly-healed contusions, none of which chilled him like the one on Link's back.  He applied more pressure to his calves, letting his fingertips press as they wanted into the taut flesh and eliciting sighs of relief from the parted lips above his head.  Link inhaled as if to speak, but let the thought go unvoiced.  Rhett figured it was for the best.

His hands made their way to Link's foot, soaping and scrubbing gently before lifting it off the floor and massaging it slowly, his ears tuned in to the airy whimpers and sighs that accompanied the stretching of small and rigid muscles.  He kept his eyes down, mostly, only glancing upward to check Link's face for pain.  These checks had to be quick: holding focus on Link's slackened jaw and closed eyes for too long stirred something wild in him, and this was no time to address such instincts.

The mist from the showerhead had caught on his clothes, but Rhett hardly noticed.  He let the steam seep into him as his hands worked strong, thoughtful shapes into Link's skin, shifting to his right foot, massaging away what tension he could, and sliding back up his leg.  Crossing the curve of his knee, Rhett chanced raising his eyes one more time and flinched.  Link stared him down as his hands drifted up and away from his thigh.  They held their gaze for a loaded moment before Rhett cleared his throat and pushed himself up as Link reached for the showerhead and let hot water wash away his work.

Rhett stepped out of the curtain and wiped his face with a hand towel.  Another quick glance in the mirror revealed the half-smile he couldn't quite suppress.  He chose to overlook the shadows around his eyes.

Stepping back toward the door, he caught Link twisting the cap off of a small bottle of shampoo, trying to keep his left arm still.  From there, Rhett moved without having to think.

"Here," he said, holding his palm out.  Link accepted the help quickly, sliding away from the wall and handing over the bottle as Rhett reached with his opposite hand for the showerhead. 

"Close your eyes."

As the water hit Link's scalp, Rhett inhaled the last remaining traces of his unique scent.  It was warm, an earthy mix of sweat and the oil that given his hair its permanent sheen, but Rhett couldn't blame him for wanting a clean start.  He poured a healthy pool of the clear shampoo into his palm and brought it down gently at the crown of Link's head.  As Rhett worked it through his hair, Link's shoulders relaxed, hunching forward as his head leaned back.

"Light nails.  And circles," he commanded thoughtlessly. Trapped in a definite reverie, Rhett simply laughed and obeyed, scratching his scalp gently.

"You got it," he murmured back, letting the lather run down his arms, soaking into his rolled sleeves.  "How's that?"

Link hummed in affirmation, leaning back just slightly into the touch.  Rhett's fingers slid easily through his dark strands, carefully avoiding the scab at his occipital bone.  He blinked away the memory of the blood that had transferred from this spot to the tree that had ended Link's fall, opting instead to imagine more firmly gripping these fistfuls in healthier circumstances.

Link's hair had been long clean by the time the water poured over him again.  He leaned his head further back, letting the lather travel in rivulets down his neck under watchful eyes.  Eventually, he leaned out of the stream and turned to the faucet knob, shutting it off completely.  By the time he'd turned back around, Rhett was extending a large towel, gaze averted again. 

"Thank you," Link said quietly, pressing his face into the towel before dragging it over the rest of his torso as much as possible.  When he cringed at the twist necessary to reach his back, a fresh towel fell over his shoulders with large hands drying him cautiously, avoiding pressure on his most tender wounds.  He chuckled again at his own helplessness and surrendered to the aid, sighing as his legs and feet were covered in quick but thorough passes. 

"Now," Rhett said, dropping the towel into Link's lap and reaching for the clean gown, "you want lotion, you're on your own."

Link laughed softly, watching Rhett approach with the fresh garment in hand.  When it extended his way, he wrapped his left fingers around Rhett's wrist and reached with his right for a dampened sleeve.  Rhett bent easily, his will to fight depleted.  He let himself be pulled into another, more demanding kiss, inhaling the new soapy scent from Link's skin.  He took a knee again, let Link lean over him, hold the sides of his face for dear life, and taste all that he could reach of his mouth.  He'd been happy to serve and expected no reward, but Rhett couldn't refuse this token of appreciation. 

When they separated for a breath, he opened his eyes, and he was nearly brought to tears at the sight of Link looking back.  It lasted for only a second, but from this angle, at this proximity, he saw the same Link he'd always known looking down into his face, returning every unspeakable sentiment with which he'd wrestled for the past week, if not in fact longer.

And then Link smirked, and he was gone, covered over by this mask of inhibitionless, this unruly version of an already bright spirit. 

He extended his arms, allowing Rhett to pull the gown up them, waiting until the snaps and ties were fastened before letting the towels fall from his lap.   Then Rhett opened the door and ducked under his arm again, pulling him up and out of the bathroom, one stilted step at a time.

Link sank back into his bed with a heavy sigh and found that he could barely keep his eyes open.  Rhett settled into the recliner next to him and casually placed his hand on the edge of the bed, smiling when Link reached for it.

"I feel human again," Link said, pulling the thin sheet up to his chest, hand snaking out to hold onto Rhett.  "Thank you."

Rhett watched him drift to sleep, waiting until his breathing had slowed before running his thumb along the back of Link's hand and whispering, "You're welcome."


	19. Keeping Up

Link opened his eyes and shivered.  As the world came into focus, he frowned, trying to connect some kind of memory to his surroundings.  They felt familiar, but distantly so.

The room was larger than he'd expected, with light green walls where he'd remembered beige.  The blanket covering his legs felt heavier than before.  The setting sun glowed through a window on his right rather than his left. 

But when he laid eyes on his wife, his face relaxed. 

"Hey," Christy said with a smile.  "You hungry?  You don't want to miss dinner hours."

"I fell asleep."  The grogginess of his own voice surprised him.  Christy laughed warmly.

"I know.  We were here."

Link scanned the room. 

"Well, they're gone now, Baby.  They went home with Mama."

He closed his eyes and let three young, beaming faces surface in his head.  They made him smile to himself. 

"Yeah, I remember." 

"Good," she replied, moving to sit next to him in the bed.  He slid to one side, allowing her lie beside him and intertwine their fingers.  As she spoke, he dropped his nose into her hair and inhaled the faint scent of her shampoo, letting it soothe him in its familiarity.

"Can I quiz you?"

He nodded, then lowered his temple against the crown of her head.  "Go for it."

"What was for breakfast?"

"Oatmeal and sausage.  I was not a fan."

She vibrated with a chuckle.  "You were not.  How about after breakfast?"

"The worst personal trainer ever."

"That's because it was physical therapy, not a workout.  But okay.  Last one, then.  What is today?"

"That's my line."

Christy laughed and craned her neck to look up at him, her face puzzled.  "What?"

He shook his head dismissively, not sure he could effectively explain the root of his knee-jerk response.  Instead, he took a deep breath and thought, silently praying for a telling sequence of memories.  His effort produced recollections of cold hands helping him to stretch his legs, clenching his jaw through walking several unassisted steps, then crossing the hallway with a therapist on one side and Christy on the other, eating at least two unsatisfying dinners, laughing through how exhausted he still became at just brushing his own teeth.  In everything he remembered, he sensed definite progress.  He also sensed a void. 

He could answer the question, but he didn't want to be right.

"It's Friday."

Christy rubbed his forearm approvingly.  "It's Friday."

"Why's everyone keep askin' me these questions?  You're treating me like I knocked my head or somethin'."

When she looked back up, he was able to hold his straight face for exactly four seconds.  When he cracked a smile, she pushed herself off of him and stood. 

"Alright, wise guy.  That's it.  I'm outta here."

"Oh, you'd abandon me here?" His lips turned down into a comical pout.  "How could you do this to me?"

"I've been doing it to you for a week, and each morning, you keep waking up and gettin' stronger and stronger.  We can't mess with the system now.  Not if you want to go home on Monday."

"Do you _want_ me to come home?  I mean, you must be getting used to having the bed to yourself.  Less laundry.  Fewer dishes."  The joke hadn't come out as lightly as he'd intended, leaving them awkwardly staring at each other as the words hung between them until she rolled her eyes and sighed.

"I'll take the dishes and clothes.  And I've never had a problem sharing my bed with you.  I sleep better that way."

"I guess I'll come home, then." 

"Good.  That's settled.  Until the next time we have this same talk."

"Christy, I hit my head.  How could you kid about that?"

She didn't miss a beat.  "Just following your lead, Sugar.  I'm going home.  You have your phone, you know.  If you get lonely, you have a long list of contacts waiting to hear from you."

With that, she bent and kissed him first on the head, then on the lips, catching him off guard and drawing a toothy grin for a farewell.

He turned his attention to the TV hanging in front of the bed, trying to watch the local evening news.  By the time the weather report had begun, his eyes had glazed over, his thoughts turned inward and backward, returning to the sense of loss that had come with remembering the past few days.  Christy had been at his side the whole time, riding in the ambulance as he was smoothly transferred from San Bernardino, hearing his complaints after the stretching sessions with new therapists, cheering him on when his steps became less strained and more natural.  His kids had visited twice, piling on his lap and making him laugh with their stories of time spent with a grandmother who couldn't even pretend to discipline them.  Stevie had stopped by, updating him on the few developments at the studio.  Plenty of people had dropped in to keep him company.

Rhett had not.

Seventy-two hours had passed since they'd seen each other, and now left to his own devices, Link was growing irritated with that.

He snapped out of his daze and swiped his phone off the bedside table.  By habit, he'd opened his few active social media accounts, searching for signs of life.  Rhett had made no updates, public or private, since December.  Link narrowed his eyes and opened his messages, zipping past dozens of unread texts until he settled on one of the few names who'd known better than to try to contact him. 

He'd sent the message before he even realized he was typing.

_-What are you doing?_

Rhett's response came a minute later, and even in its simplicity, sent a thrill through Link.

_-Walking the dog._

_-When did you get a dog?_

This time, the reply took longer.  Link's phone grew heavy in his hand as he realized how flat his joke might have fallen in writing.  He pictured Rhett shaking his head, rubbing his pained face, struggling to come up with the right answer.  When his phone finally pinged again, Link sighed in relief.

_-Ha._

_-Sorry.  That wasn't funny._

_-I'll add it to the list._

_-Yikes._

_-Kidding.  Doing good?_

_-Been worse.  Like, oh, last week._

_-Ha._

Link's brow furrowed.  He wasn't sure what he needed to hear, but the conversation was far more clipped than he'd hoped.  His last clear memory of Rhett had them face to face in the steaming shower of his previous hospital room.  The image alone was dizzying, but mixed with Rhett's sudden absence, it sent his heart racing.  On one hand, he knew it would be easier to chalk it up to a dream and, as Rhett seemed to be doing, ignore it completely.  On the other hand, he knew himself too well for that.

_-Haven't seen you in a while._

Rhett's textual silence felt like an admission of guilt, but Link couldn't leave it alone.  Without thinking, he followed his jab with a sharper dig.

_-Guess I expected you'd visit when I moved.  Starting to wonder if I'm remembering you wrong.  Wondering if I'm making things up._

_-Like what?_

_-I'd rather not have a written record._ He smirked at how paranoid he sounded.  Then his chest warmed with an intoxicating bravado, and he finished his thought.  - _Just that maybe I like you more than you like me._

When Rhett did not respond for a long minute, Link kept on.

_-Am I crazy?_

_-Yes._

_...but not for that._

_-I'm lonely.  C just left not too long ago and I'm sad already._

_-I can't come right now._

Link inhaled slowly, letting his bravery swell.  _-Not asking.  Just send me a picture.  Remind me what you look like._

A few seconds passed before an image popped up on his screen, making him exhale a quiet laugh.  In it, Barbara lay stretched on her side basking in the day's final rays of sun.  He glanced at the window and smiled at the same golden light warming his room.

 _You look great_ , he sent just before another image appeared: Rhett sat on a park bench, square sunglasses pulled down just far enough to show his dramatically rolling eyes.

_-Don't need your sass, McLaughlin._

_-Your turn.  How much of a mess are you?_

Link's stomach fluttered.  It was his turn to pause, caught off guard by the request.  He considered his unwashed hair and heavy stubble and felt himself deflate.

When his phone chimed again, he flinched. 

_-Well?_

_-Get real close to your screen._

_\- K._

_-Closer._

_-...K?_

_-CLOSER._

 

 

 

He'd known it was coming, but Rhett still laughed when the too-close picture of Link's wide eye came through.  It was more than a joke; it was a sign that Link was recovering and holding on to memories from half a year ago.  He was becoming more and more himself. 

The problem was that Rhett hadn't minded whatever he'd been before.  He was bold and brazen and unafraid to ask for what he wanted.  But he always had been.  So exactly what had shifted in Link, Rhett could not yet discern, but it had been enough to shake him.

He'd hardly trusted his legs as he'd walked out of the hospital, tripping over two separate thresholds on the way to his car.  On his journey back home, he'd kept the radio off, replaying as many of their exchanges as he could manage, driving in a dangerous daze until he reached his own driveway and wrestled down the image of Link's eyes gazing down at him, burying it at the farthest reaches of his mind so that he could function with some semblance of normalcy.  But as he lay in bed that night, he recognized what he'd swallowed down in the name of an honest favor.

Purpose aside, he had had Link's body under his hands.  He'd felt broad expanses of skin that he'd hardly ever touched sliding beneath his palms as he'd washed it clean.  Link had been in as vulnerable a state as either of them could imagine, and he'd asked for Rhett.  And what Rhett knew now, in the clarity of distance, was that the next time Link nudged him in such a direction, he couldn't hope to keep his lips, his teeth, or his tongue to himself.  In the purity of the moment, spurred by Link's devilish grins and shameless imaginings, he'd earned a taste of what they could do together, and he doubted that he could look Link in the face without seeking it out in earnest.

So he'd kept his distance, citing excuse after excuse to stay away from the hospital, even when Link transferred.  He'd hoped that Link's days were busy enough for him to hardly notice.  He'd justified his absence by telling himself that Link might not even remember it.  The crushing weight of guilt tied to the thought kept it from crossing his mind more than once, but it lingered at the edges, close enough to help him decide to wait until Link's imminent release to see him again, sensing that the choice came with a significant risk.

He had no way of knowing who Link would be when next they saw each other. 

But the text that Rhett read and reread four times over gave him hope. 

_...maybe I like you more than you like me._

He grinned to himself, shaking his head at the unlikelihood before typing out what little response he could fathom.

_-PEDER!_

_-I'm going home Monday.  You gonna come dance with me?_

_-Get settled in.  I'll be there Tuesday.  We can dance, if you can keep up._

 

The weekend passed in a blur of social calls and family outings.  He couldn't pretend that Link hadn't occupied half of his brainpower for the last forty-eight hours, but Rhett had chosen to embrace the busyness, sticking to harmless small talk with loosely held friends to pass the time.  All the while, he kept a hand on his pocket, waiting for a buzz that never came, and trying to convince himself that he didn't mind that Link was leaving him alone.  Eventually, though, even as Jessie stared him down from her side of the bed, Rhett allowed himself to sleep.  Sunday gave way to a brand new week, and he found himself back at the studio, organizing his shared office, checking the mountain of emails that had piled up since Friday, and running errands usually saved for assistants.  Still his phone was silent, even when he knew that Link was going home that afternoon.  Around four o'clock, from his reclined chair in their office loft, he talked himself out of taking the radio silence personally, and opted instead to focus on how they would spend their time together the next day.  This was his mistake.

It consumed him.

He planned out where to buy lunch at exactly what time, which movies to bring with him.  He gathered a handful of fan mail for them to read together.  He scheduled in a walk to the end of Link's street, planned for a potential trip to the nearest park, should Link want the sun on his skin. 

Of course, the second he walked through the Neals' front door, much of his preparation fell away, replaced by thoughtless excitement and anticipation. 

"Hey, you," Christy said through a wide smile, reaching for the paper bags gripped in his tight fists.  His release was delayed as he glanced into the house over her shoulder, and she had to tug the bags out of white-knuckled fists.  "Death grip on the Thai, huh?  Did you not eat breakfast?"

He shook his head at himself and laughed as he stepped through the door. 

"He's in the living room.  You want a drink?" she asked, closing the door with her hip.  "I was just getting His Majesty some tea, then we're heading out."

"I'll get it, Mama.  You go wrangle," he said, following Christy to the kitchen.

She set the bags on the counter and raised her palms.  "If you say so!"  She was efficient: within a minute, her mother and three kids were making their way to the door at her direction, departing for their own adventure with a chorus of goodbyes.  Listening to it from his seclusion in the kitchen, Rhett navigated cabinets with ease as he poured two drinks and plated colorful noodles.  Placing the meal on a wicker tray, he inhaled deeply and tried to suppress the grin tugging at the corners of mouth.

The sight of Link lying on his own couch, his own little dog curled into the crook of his knees was enough to dismantle Rhett's attempt at stoicism.  His face stretched into a broad smile as Link turned to look at him.

"I thought I heard you come in.  Good thing you brought food.  They just left me to starve."

"I can't believe they just took off without you.  To a petting zoo, no less.  You're missing the goats!" Rhett exclaimed as he set the tray down on the coffee table in front of Link, who replied in a masterful deadpan.

"Yeah, I'm real broken up about it."

Link pushed himself up, leaning into the plush armrest at the right end of the couch as Rhett settled into the left.  They ate with their plates tucked tight to their chests, crunching into crab rangoon and spinning rice noodles around their forks.  The meal was a quiet one, Link focusing on balancing his plate, Rhett focusing on not watching Link too closely.  They let their eyes drift to the television, occasionally making the lazy joke about an actor's appearance or delivery, but Rhett could tell from the particularly low ball humor that their hearts were not in it. 

Soon enough, though, their empty plates were stacked on the tray again, and they were sitting with idle hands. 

"So, you want to talk about work?" Rhett asked, having needlessly waited for the beginning of a commercial break.  Link grabbed the remote from the end table and switched to a satellite radio station before turning to answer.

"I talked to Stevie this morning.  I'm going in Monday."

"What?" Rhett balked, surprised at his lack of information.  Such was the price for his absence, he figured.  "That seems...soon, right?"

"Well, I don't know.  There's nothing _wrong_ with me, really.  I can't work a full day, obviously, but why not spend a couple hours at the desk?  The episodes are written and ready to go."

 _Because we don't know what you'll be like_ , Rhett wanted to answer.  He wanted to look Link in the eye and in crystalline terms sort their reality from whatever had happened in the hospital, whatever had inspired Link to hold the sides of his face and bring their lips together.  He wanted desperately to know what Link had thought he'd remembered, what he'd talked around as if they'd gone through it together.  He wanted to clear the fog of uncertainty between them.  And he wanted to breathe it in at the same time.  He wanted let it pour over and through him, accept Link's invented history and bask in the new colors it painted them.  Link's lead was hard to predict, but he wanted to follow it all the same.  And because Rhett was only human, after all, that is what he did.

"Alright, then we don't have to talk about work.  We'll cross that bridge on Monday.  What do you want to do with your free time, then?"

Link sighed and closed his eyes, letting his head roll back.  "The quiet is kind of nice, isn't it?"

"Mmhmm," Rhett agreed, despite his true opinion.  With Link's eyes closed, he felt safe to watch his face, mirroring the miniscule furrows of his brow, the slight downturn of his lips, stopping just short of matching the deep breath that eventually preceded another thought.

"I can't believe you didn't come see me."

"Wha—I was busy!  I was needed.  Decisions to be made, man.  _Someone_ had to have a presence in the studio..."

"I was fifteen minutes away," Link shot back, cracking an eye to catch Rhett's hapless expression.  "You might have dropped by on the way home."

"You were fine.  Were you not fine?"

"I mean...I didn't get another good shower until I got home."

"I assume a lawsuit is already in progress."

Link sighed and shook his head.  "It'll never stick.  I think I did shower again.  I just can't really remember it."

"Unmemorable showers?  I had no idea you were suffering so."

"Those nurses just don't kiss like you do."

 Rhett swallowed, bracing himself for a foray into the territory he'd longed to revisit.  He kept his gaze locked on Link.

"Hmm.  So you _do_ remember that." 

Link lifted his head and narrowed his eyes at Rhett.  "What does that mean?  Of course I remember that."

"Okay, alright," Rhett responded with a placating drawl.  "Do you remember what we talked about before that?  You were telling me about the room.  That white room..."

Link cocked his head, reading Rhett's face for the right response.  He seemed to sense the disparity in their knowledge of the place, but the longer he mulled it over, the less reserved he seemed.  After a long silence between them, he sighed and dropped his head on the back cushion again, showing off his neck as he spoke.

"That cabin, or whatever it was.  In the woods, I think."

"At Big Bear?"

Link sat quietly for a few breaths before answering.

"Yeah, maybe so."

"We were both there, right?  I was at Big Bear.  We all were."

Link chewed the inside of his lip and opened his eyes, staring up through the white ceiling.

"Okay.  Then, Big Bear I guess.  'Cause we were both there."  

"Do you remember making hot chocolate for everyone in that kitchen?  You were obsessed with getting it right.  You actually asked for it before you passed out on the slope," Rhett said, feeling his fingers tingle when Link shook his head.

"No, _you_ made the hot chocolate."

"Oh."

"You made it, and you gave it to me.  You were trying to make me feel better, but...I don't remember why."  Link closed his eyes again, working backward through his thoughts.

"Hmm.  Me neither," Rhett replied coolly, turning to face him fully.  "What else do you remember?  You were trying to tell a couple different stories..."  He'd barely voiced the question when Link began to smile. 

"The party.  Kimball's party," he answered, suddenly talking from low in this throat, the sound vibrating through his chest.  "You had a picture from it, up over the fireplace.  Weird place for it.  But I guess that was the point, huh?  You wanted me to remember."

Rhett swallowed, narrowing his eyes, intrigued by the fiction and trying to keep up.  "Think so?"

"Well, you keep bringing it up."

Rhett laughed, raising his arm to rest on the back of the sofa, resting his head in his hands.  He hoped the openness of the posture would bring him some ease and confidence, but the devious curl to Link's lips and the subtle arc to his eyebrow undermined his efforts.  He stayed quiet, letting Link draw his own conclusions.

"Oh my goodness... _that's_ why you're here.  You got me alone and wore down my defenses with food..." Link accused, voice airy with playful disbelief.

"Hmm...because of Kimball's?"

"I waited for you.  I sat on the stairs for an hour, waiting to catch you walking by until I took off after you."  Link opened his eyes, looked up again at the ceiling.  "This time you hunted me down."

"Well," Rhett answered quietly, "you were pretty easy to find."

Link grabbed the remote again and raised the music's volume above the point of casual conversation.  Rhett's pulse quickened.  He leaned forward slightly, eyes trained on Link as he slid to the edge of the cushion and slowly pushed himself to stand.  Once his legs were straight, Link turned to face Rhett, arms extended in a wordless _ta da._   Rhett grinned and applauded.

His smile faltered as Link moved toward him.  And when Link pulled at his legs, facing him forward, and began carefully straddling his knees, Rhett didn't know what to do with his mouth.  He let it fall open, just slightly, just enough to draw in extra oxygen if need be. 

Link steadied himself with a hand firmly planted on top of each of Rhett's shoulders as he walked his knees forward, shins pressing parallel against thighs, easily transferring his body's heat through his gray joggers and into Rhett's jeans. 

"You must be feeling nostalgic," he said evenly.  Rhett was forced to look up into his face in order to understand him over the music.  "You must be longing for those good old days, huh?  When I'd climb into your lap..."  He let himself rest back on his haunches, dropping his full weight onto Rhett's legs.  Rhett hoped the music was loud enough to cover the shaky sigh that escaped him.  "When you'd pretend to be surprised..."

"Link," Rhett tried.  It hardly escaped his lips; his body had no interest in resisting and would not help him in the effort.

The hands anchored on his shoulders slid inward, grazing up the sides of his neck and resting at the corners of his jaw, holding him still against a most welcome attack.

 

 

 

Link felt the tension in his legs melt as his lips met Rhett's.  He'd worked to keep a cool exterior, but as he'd retraced his memory, his footing had been anything but steady.  With his eyes closed, images shifted in and out of place, dulled and brightened by the sound of Rhett's voice, fractured by light before solidifying into something whole and not wholly believable.  Navigating the past tired him, though, and he knew that he could find relief if he wrapped himself around Rhett. 

So relief he sought.

And when Rhett's breath rushed down the side of his face, warming his cheek as they sampled the spices on each other's breath, he felt the tinge of confusion wash away.  He spread his knees further to inch closer in, embracing the ache that rose in his joints, hardly noticing it when large hands slid up his thighs, coming to rest at his waist, gripping firmly. 

For a few long seconds, they were content to relish the pleasure of mere contact.  They floated in this initial timidity, waiting each other out to see who would push or pull first.  But they were what they were, and the instant Link's fingers turned to claws against Rhett's skin, they were locked in a battle to the bottom, each vying for the chance to pull at the other's lower lip, to run his tongue along its edge, to draw shallow sighs and subtle rocks of otherwise stiff and still hips.

Link proved greedier, if not just less hesitant, and made the first trespass into the soft heat of Rhett's mouth.  Their tongues grazed then retreated, sly animals wary of bites.  When none came, they moved forth again, cautious and slow until their next meeting dissolved all semblance of apprehension. 

Rhett's hands tried to tighten on Link's waist, but it moved beneath his touch, rising as Link sat up on his knees, raising himself above Rhett and taking the rare opportunity for a height advantage.  As Link towered over him, tilting his face up by the grip on his jaw, Rhett let his fingers slide upward, resting loosely at the crook of Link's neck, gluing themselves to a pulse point.  In the counter-pressure, Link could feel his own heartbeat.  He pressed himself harder into the touch, craving a more tactile reminder of his own existence.  Rhett pulled back and panted, half-opened eyes glazed in a way that made Link laugh.  He wrapped his arms around Rhett's neck and rested their temples against one another, chests pressing together as they caught their breath. 

Despite the growing pain in his legs, Link felt at home in the position.  He sensed that he belonged where he was, and yet the experience was laced with a novelty that spoke of distance.  His ability to render Rhett breathless had only fueled his audacity, so instead of letting his question torture him, he simply asked it.

"Why does it feel like it's been so long?"

Looking out over the back of the couch, he could not see Rhett's face, so the wait for a response seemed to last for hours.  He adjusted his grip so that he could rest his head on the sloping shoulder in front of him, letting his eyes wander up the lines of Rhett's neck, predicting how the skin there might taste, guessing at the delicious sound he might earn by sinking his teeth into it. 

His imagination grasped the thread and followed it toward a picture of Rhett dropping his head back, exposing the rest of his neck to a series of licks and nibbles that wore at his posture until he simply couldn't hold himself up any longer. 

Once he was on his back, Link perched over him on hands and knees, his arms would fall in surrender over his head, leaving his suddenly bare chest to the same fate as his neck.  But the fire it ignited would not be the same as it was in college, when, emboldened by a dangerous blend of frat-grade drinks, he'd cornered Rhett in a back bedroom and demanded that they acknowledge whatever it was that had crept into their glances and brief moments of contact.  This would not be as awkward in bodies now doubled in age, with hearts that knew what they wanted and minds that knew how to both seek and provide it.  It would not be as desperate, perhaps, but nor would it flare and flicker out so fast.  That thought made him smile. 

When a warm hand affectionately rubbed the small of his back, he momentarily closed his eyes and let his question go unanswered, forgetting he'd even asked it. 

"You taste like garlic," he muttered thoughtlessly.  Rhett shook with a laugh.

"Sorry," he answered, leaning his temple against Link's forehead.  "Food was part of the trap, remember?"

"It's not the worst," Link said, unwinding his arms, hands falling to rest at Rhett's chest.  "I'd go back for seconds."

Rhett hummed a wordless affirmation and dropped his free hand to Link's thigh.  His hum changed in tone.

"You're shaking."

"What?" Link asked, moving to push himself upright.  As he straightened his back, a sharp pain shot through the sides of his legs.  His whole body tensed in response, trying to work itself out of the cramp.  "Oh, shit.  Ah," he grunted, quickly rolling off of Rhett and lying back across the sofa, bringing his knees tight together to ease the ache.  Rhett reached for the remote and turned down the music as Link gritted his teeth and groaned through his muscle spasm, whining at the twinges that rippled through his hips until it faded away, leaving his heart pounding in his chest.  When he finally opened his eyes, Rhett was staring down at him, wide-eyed and white with anxiety.  Link took a deep breath and laughed through his exhalation.

"I'm pretty sure I just had a charley horse in both legs...at the same time."

Rhett shook his head in disbelief.  "You didn't feel that coming?  Your legs were shaking like crazy."

 Link ran a hand over his face and breathed a quivering sigh.  "I must have been distracted," he said, moving his foot to Rhett's thigh, grinning as a hand wrapped around his ankle.

"That was nuts," Rhett said quietly, gaze lowering to the leg on his lap.  "You scared me a little."

"I'm okay.  I'm fine," Link replied soothingly, letting his voice drop as he spoke.  "Come here.  Let me prove it to you." 

Link knew he had an expressive face.  There was little the man could not emote, so he'd hardly expected much resistance when he narrowed his eyes and pulled his bottom lip between his teeth.  He thought he knew Rhett's weaknesses, and that this penchant for nonverbal commands was one of them.  So he was surprised when long limbs weren't immediately crawling up the length of his body, coming to rest in a wide straddle of his sensitive hips, covering him over and holding him down, burying him in a fresh layer of restorative kisses that would remind them both of how to proceed.

"Link..." Rhett sighed, voice thick with something that prickled up the back of Link's neck, setting his scalp tingling.  His brow arched at the feeling, instantly craving more of it.  He tipped his head to the side, asking after whatever could possibly be holding them up. 

Rhett shook his own head at the expression and continued, stroking Link's shin.  "I don't know if this is the best time for...I don't know if this is a good time."

"Oh.  An entire afternoon and a house to ourselves isn't good?" he shot back, startling himself with the acidity of his tone.  When he saw Rhett's face turn defensive and cold, he bit the inside of his lip in self-admonishment. 

"I just feel like we have some things to talk about.  And you're still not quite...you know."  His eyes flicked down to Link's legs before resting again on his face. "Your old self."

Link frowned.  "Alright, you know what? Muscle cramps can happen to anyone."  He softened, kicking playfully at Rhett's chest.  "But fine.  If you want to wait so that you can wine and dine me properly, that's fine, too.  I'll let you.  A little reward for surviving the hospital?"

Rhett hesitated before finally nodding along.  "Yeah, something like that.  Can we just...can we watch a movie?"

Link grinned and let his foot trail down Rhett's chest toward his stomach, and lower.  "Will you be able to keep your hands off of me?"  A firm grip stopped the foot in its tracks.

"Not if you force me into self-defense."

Within five minutes, the plates had been cleared from the coffee table, fresh glasses of tea had appeared, and a DVD had started playing, and Link hadn't lifted a finger.  Rather, he'd rolled onto his side, newly covered in a plush white blanket and facing the television and leaving a space for Rhett that, once filled, he pushed his feet into again, nestling his toes between denim knees.

He knew that Rhett liked to talk about the movies they watched together.  He was used to the pressure to pay attention that came with Rhett's viewing company.  So when he recognized the old action movie as one they'd each seen more than once, he took the opportunity being offered, and let himself drift toward a light and comfortable sleep.  He'd floated to its edge and was just sinking into a smooth blackness when his mouth spoke again, disconnected from his consciousness. 

"Sorry I couldn't keep up."

 

Rhett softly squeezed his blanketed foot.

"'s alright," he whispered in response, sensing that Link was too far gone to hear him.  "I couldn't either.  But we won't let that stop us from trying."

 

 


	20. Leaping

 "So everything's up and running on Monday, then?  That's exciting," Jessie said as she hopped onto a barstool at her kitchen counter.  On the other side, Rhett mixed a rainbow of spices into ground turkey with his hands. 

"It is.  Good for everyone.  Get back to normal." 

She squinted at his brevity, and he felt the piercing gaze trying to read him. 

"What are _you_ lookin' at?  You better get to choppin'," he ordered, nodding at the onion on the cutting board in front of her.  She picked up the knife, casually pointing it in his direction.

"I see you, mister.  I see you sidesteppin' me."

He huffed and rolled his eyes, dedicating himself fully to his task rather than defending his innocence.  He didn't have much to defend.

"Roll those eyes out of your head for all I care.  But you've been like this since..." She trailed, shaking her head as her lips pursed closed.  The knife sliced into the onion.

For a moment, he let it linger, this suggestion that she need not voice.  But it grated him, eating away at his resolve until he simply had to address it. 

"Like what since when?  Out with it."

It was her turn to exhale with no small drama. 

"Oh, you know.  A little moody, and a little distracted.  Since you got back Tuesday."

"Why would you wait two days to say something?" he asked, trying to redirect the conversation.  She was too quick.

"Stop deflecting.  What's that matter?  She called me today.  Christy.  She said Link's been a little antsy, too.  Did something happen that you didn't tell me about?"

Rhett glanced toward the kitchen doorway, unwilling to even touch the topic with his sons around.  She followed his gaze and waved it off.    "They're outside."

He took a deep breath and began shaping meatballs, dropping three of them carefully into a saucepan before he finally double checked for approval in her face.  She tilted her head, waiting.

"Alright.  Okay," he sighed, "I didn't know how to...I don't know how to talk about this."

"Words are a good start."

"It feels weird."

She conceded that point, refocusing her attention on the growing pile of diced onion in front of her.  "It is a little weird.  And a little not, if we spend too much time thinking about it.  I try not to.  I don't need all the details; I just...are you two okay?"

"I mean, the details are kind of the thing, though, aren't they?  I mean...I need to know what you're okay with here," he said without lifting his eyes.

"Oh.  _Oh._ "

"No, no," he backpedalled, shaking his head wildly.  "Nope.  Nothing like that happened."

"But you told him how you feel."

"I...he knows, yes.  He does.  And he seems to...He kissed me, okay?  He got on my lap and he kissed me.  A lot.  There, I said it."

"Yeah, I definitely said I didn't need the details."  Her wryness surprised them both.

He laughed dryly.  " _You're_ deflecting, here.  Making jokes because you're uncomfortable."

"When did I say I was comfortable?  I never made that claim.  But," she started, letting herself sigh before continuing, "I also don't know if this is something you can fight.  Or, maybe it's not something you _should_ fight.  I don't know where I am on that one.  But, so, okay.  You two are going to explore this.  It's really happening.  It's not the life I expected for us, but it's certainly not the worst thing that could have happened.  So.  Okay," she repeated like a mantra, staring down at her fragrant work.  "Maybe you two really do love each other, and so we're all one big happy family.  One big, weird, kind of crowded family."  Carried into a spiral, she'd started talking more to herself than to him.  He lowered his head to catch her gaze.

"Jessie.  You're getting a little ahead of yourself, huh?"

She shook her head again and laid the knife down, wiping her eyes with the back of her wrist.  "Well, I don't know.  It's been thirty years in the making; who's to say how quickly it moves now?"

"Well...we talked about going out tomorrow.  Seein' a movie or something easy.  He hasn't really been out in the world much.  But I didn't want to if—"

"No, no.  Yes.  Go do it.  I've got Janie and her boys coming over tomorrow, anyway, remember?"  She nodded as she spoke, but her eyes were less sure than her gesture.  "What has Christy said about all this?  Do you know?  I mean, you know, now that it's all really happening. Maybe that's a dumb question.  How could you—"

"I don't," he answered, gently cutting off her rambling.  "But before I left, I asked him to talk to her, to make sure she's still okay."  He thought about the conversation held as he'd been walking out Link's door, then shook his head.  "He laughed.  Said I was being ridiculous, but that he'd check in with her."

"Interesting...wonder what _that's_ supposed to mean."

"Couldn't say.  But if everyone's okay, then we're going to go ahead and hang out tomorrow and see what—" He stopped just short of letting his mouth follow his mind.  "...We're going to hang out."

She shook her head and raised her hands.  "Deal.  Just roll the meatballs, would you?"

As she blinked her irritated eyes, he laughed and reached for a handful of onion.  "Strong one, huh?"

She nodded and dabbed her watery eyes again.  "You have no idea."

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

"Because he asked me to."

Christy felt her lips curve into an odd combination of a smile and a frown.  She knew she should not have been surprised by the bluntness of the answer, so she decided she was simply surprised by its meaning.

"You're asking permission because you were asked to ask permission?"

Link shrugged, nonchalantly reverting to an eye-roll to dismiss what he must have perceived as disbelief.  Christy shook her head, rolling onto her side to face him, pulling their shared blankets across the bed a bit as she did so.  He tugged them back into place.  A month ago, he'd have let them go.  She sighed.

"Well, I don't mind if you spend time together.  You need to get out a little."

"I thought the same thing.  I don't know what was up with him," Link yawned, stretching an arm over his eyes as he settled further into his pillow.  "It was like he had something to say the whole time he was here.  Or like he kept waiting for me to say something.  Who knows?"

Christy chewed the inside of her cheek, trying to resist her urge to mettle.  But something about his lackadaisical tone had stricken her too uncomfortably for her to let it lie.

"I mean...not to pry, but... _did_ he say anything...surprising?  Or you know, _different_?  Has he talked about his— hmm...about while you were out?"  He peeked out from under his arm, eyes narrowed at her, the gaze causing her to wilt.  "Or no?  Never mind."

"You too, huh?  With the weird questions."

She laughed and covered her face with her hand, rolling onto her back in exasperation.  "I don't know what I was trying to say.  Nothing.  I must be more tired than I thought."  From behind closed eyelids, she kicked herself for backing off.

"I guess I missed something somewhere," Link conceded after a pause.  "But he's taking me out for dinner somewhere.  Probably some weird ass place that he finds exciting.  His twisted little way of wining and dining."

"Wining and dining?" she repeated, voice squeaking in mild surprise, doing all it could to invite him to make an announcement, to expand upon any differences in his relationship with Rhett that a wife might find relevant. 

He ignored it, choosing for his closing statement a dismissive, "You know how he is."

She shook her head and reached for the light on the nightstand, plunging the room into a soundless darkness, though her mind was anything but quiet.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The radio had blared the entire drive to Link's house in a blatant attempt to drown out racing thoughts.  Rhett had spent half of the short trip wiping his palms on his thighs, focusing on singing along with half a dozen songs to which he hardly knew the words.  By the time he pulled into the familiar driveway, he'd glanced at his reflection in the rearview mirror at least six times, and he finally laughed at himself. 

He couldn't remember a time when he was nervous to see Link.  His best friend had always been a source of light and comfort.  He typically felt more at home within arm's reach of the man than he could being miles apart.  Even with his quirks, his fickle moods and occasionally abrasive nature, Link was familiar.  He was dependable, a grounding force that kept Rhett focused on all that mattered most.  So for each step toward Link's door to send a thrill of anticipation through him was foreign, but exciting. It lit him up.

The door swung open before his knuckles hit the wood, and Christy slid out of it, latching it behind her.  His stomach dropped.

"Hey.  Hi," he tried, brows lifting in a new, less welcome kind of tension.

"Hi," she answered, biting her lip before sighing and leaning back against the door.  "You haven't said anything yet."

It was not a question.

"Um...hmmm, not rea— no.  No, not yet."

"So what does he think tonight's all about, if you had to guess?"

He froze, knowing that if Link stood among them, he'd have acknowledged the uncomfortable vibes ricocheting between them.  But Link was inside, Rhett presumed, basking in an ignorant bliss of which he was instantly jealous.

"Well..." he started, looking past her shoulder at the door behind her.  She tilted her head to place herself back in his eye line.  "I guess I can't say what he thinks."

"He thinks it's a date," she answered for him.  She'd started to smile, but Rhett didn't fully trust it.

"Mmhmm.  Interesting."

"I thought so, too.  So.  There seems to be some kind of confusion, or miscommunication, or misremembering, I hope.  I pray.  I pray to God."  Her eyes had turned to the sky and he blanched, shaking his head at what he interpreted as an accusation.

"Whoa!  Whoa, whoa, whoa.  No, now.  Hold on.  What are you saying?"

"Why would he think you two are already— _whatever_?!"

Rhett sucked a breath through his teeth, baring them as he scrunched his nose.  "That's a good question.  I can see why that's bothersome."

"Oh, good."

"He kind of just...he just woke up that way."

Her arms crossed and he raised his palms. 

"I swear.  You know I would not lie about this.  I would not lie to you, period.  And certainly not about this."

She rubbed the bridge of her nose and sighed a tired laugh.  "He said you told him to ask permission to go out tonight."

"I did.  I wanted to make sure you were comfortable with...I mean..."

"Yeah," she interrupted, letting him off the hook.  "I know.  I guess I kind of appreciate that gesture.  But the way he did it, it was so...it was so dismissive.  Like he didn't understand why you two should need any blessing to go out like this together."

"Well, hey, maybe he's starting to get sorted out, then, really," Rhett offered, though as soon as he said it, he questioned whether he liked the idea.

"No, that wasn't it.  He already thought this was...what it is.  That you were..." she trailed, fighting a more genuine smile before she could finish the thought, "wining and dining him."

Rhett laughed and the tension between them shattered.  She rubbed her face and shook her head. 

"I'm sorry.  It's so strange!" she apologized.  "I don't know what I thought.  I just couldn't help it.  This awful little part of me assumed the worst, thought that there was this chance that this _wasn't_ new, and that he didn't realize he was, I don't know, blowing his own cover.  And yours."

"Oh, man.  Wow."

"I know.  It was...I'm still not sure what to do with all of this.  I see now that I may have...I misinterpreted."

"It's alright," he exhaled, nodding in an effort to reclaim any trace of his positive energy.

"Okay.  I'm sorry.  But okay."   She pulled away from the door and reached for the knob,  speaking over her shoulder before turning it:  "You do need to clear this up, though.  That's not going to be my job." 

Her face was light, so he let himself chuckle as he nodded.

"Yes, ma'am.  I can do that."

"I mean, he needs to know the truth.  It has to come from you."

"Agreed."

She gave him a long look before nodding and pushing open the door, letting him pass through behind her. 

Rhett flinched as Link rounded the corner into the foyer, stopping short to avoid a collision.  He slid by Rhett carefully, moving toward Christy but stopping mid-stride between the two, glancing first at one, then the other, an unformed question on his face. 

Rhett stared openly.  Link was bright-eyed and clean shaved.  His hair was parted and styled meticulously, complimenting the sharpness of his black sweater and dark jeans.  He looked more like himself than Rhett had seen in weeks, and he did not want to look away.

"Yes?"  Christy finally prodded, breaking the silence.

Link shook his head, the inquisitive furrow smoothing from his brow.  "Huh.   I don't know.  Lost my train of thought."

"Did it involve saying goodbye to me?" she asked.  Rhett grinned at the resetting of Link's course.  It seemed habitual.

"It did.  But I didn't forget that part," Link answered, continuing on his path until his arms wrapped around her waist and he pulled her tightly into his chest.  He kissed the crown of her head, and when she looked up into his face, he kissed her full on the lips, disallowing her subtle retreats until she had to actively push him off of her in order to breathe.

"Alright," she groaned, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and waving them off.  "Get out of here."

"I'll drive," Link announced to a chorus of rejections.

"No, you won't," Rhett said, tightening his grip on his keys as they stepped toward the door.  "You haven't been cleared for that."

"Sure I have," Link answered.  Rhett narrowed his eyes as he pulled the front door closed behind him, waiting to latch it until he heard Christy shout from the kitchen.

"No he hasn't!"

Link made his way to the passenger's side of Rhett's car without further protest, smirking at his own failed trick. 

"You weren't really going to try to drive, were you?" Rhett asked, unlocking the doors from his fob.

"I just wanted to see if you were paying attention," he said, sliding into the car, leaving Rhett to look over its roof into the yard beyond.

"Of course you did," he sighed to himself.

 

* * *

 

Shards of tortilla and streaks of watery salsa littered the plate between them.  Half an hour after the pair had arrived in the local bar and grill, a second act had already taken a small stage at the back of the main dining room.  From their booth near the bar, they could enjoy the ambience of a live performance and hold conversation at the same time.  Though mostly, they'd chosen not to.

Link had watched Rhett, and Rhett had watched the nachos, the beer bottles, the busboys clearing tables, and sometimes even the musicians.  He'd attempted an exchange about the disinterested wait staff or muffled sound system, but when Link picked up the threads of discussion, he did so only to drop them bluntly back in front of Rhett, making a conversational show of the awkward tension between them.

"I thought about going to that hibachi place in Glendale..." Rhett remarked, watching another waiter pass their table empty handed.  "We'd have something more exciting than a dead chip plate in front of us."

"You're telling me we could have had a sweaty man flipping burning hot shrimp into our mouths with a spatula right now?" Link asked, eyes gleaming with sarcastic incredulity. 

"Well, into yours, at least.  It's big enough," he shot back. 

"Good one.  No, I'm happy enough with predictable menus and live music.  And empty glass—" Before he completed the word, their waiter appeared and wordlessly placed a dewy beer bottle in front of Rhett and a glass of iced tea in front of Link before vanishing with their empties.  Link shook his head. "To say nothing of the _service_."

Rhett laughed to himself and rubbed the bridge of his nose before taking a long drink.  Link watched him the entire time.

"Do I have something on my face?" Rhett asked. 

Whatever smart comment Link had prepared faltered on his tongue at the question.  "No.  Nothing..." he trailed, speaking slowly when he finally did finish the thought, as if looking for confirmation that he was delivering the right line.  "...nothing out of the ordinary."

Rhett shook his head with smirk.  "Whatever you say."

They let a stilted silence settle between them for another breath before Link tilted his head and leaned forward.

"What kind of secrets were you telling on my front porch?" he asked, staring directly into Rhett's face, holding his gaze until an unsteady answer came tripping out of his mouth.

"None. No secrets.  She just wanted to make sure we weren't doing anything too exciting for you."

Link ran his tongue along his teeth, evaluating the response.  He pushed back and fell against the backrest of the booth.

"I see."

Rhett swallowed and ran his fingernail along the label on his beer bottle, bearing the weight of Link's full attention and the skepticism that came with it.

"I mean, she did say..." Rhett started, instantly kicking himself for buckling, "that maybe we should...maybe we should spend some time talking about what..." He faltered, popping his knuckles as he searched for the words, sensing Link's eyebrow arching in interest even with his own eyes glued to tabletop.  "Talking about what happened while you were out."

"Oh."

"So, that might have seemed secretive, I guess, but it wasn't.  I think we just felt the need to talk about you in third person, and it seemed rude to do it right in front of you."

"So, you have more to catch me up on, then?" Link asked, tone now easy and gentle, offering a whisper of relief to Rhett in its neutrality.

Rhett shrugged a shoulder, shaking his head dismissively.  "Actually, not all that much.  Not really."

"Is this why you won't look at me?"

The question sapped Rhett's breath, striking him in the center of his chest.  His eyes raised, meeting Link's again, and the inquisitive playfulness he saw in them sent a rush of energy through him.  He decided to use it to escape the trajectory of the conversation and change course completely. 

"I don't want to talk about this.  I don't want to be here.  This isn't fun.  Let's go do something fun."

Link raised his hands in acceptance. "Whatever you say," he said, eyes lifting to the waiter approaching their table with two plates.  As he set them down, Rhett smiled and scrunched his nose innocently.

"So," he told the waiter, "we're going to need two boxes."

 

* * *

 

Link breathed deeply as he approached the red door.  His right hand held his boxed dinner as his left hand raised, fingers hovering over the keypad, waiting for muscle memory to kick in.  He knew what was happening when Rhett hung back in the car, pretending to check his phone, sending Link on ahead: he was being tested.  His mind felt a little clearer every day; this would be no challenge.

And sure enough, the second he heard the sound of Rhett's car door slamming shut, his fingers moved forward, pressing the five keys that granted him access to the studio.  He stepped in and held the door with his foot until Rhett slipped in behind him.  From there, Link followed.

Rhett walked ahead, leading him through hallways and rooms that they opted not to light, slipping past open doorways as Link grinned to himself, thrilled with the sudden covert nature of their movement.  The familiarity of the building soothed him in a way he hadn't known he needed; he enjoyed the assurance that he could still traverse it with his eyes closed.  He'd been doing so when the center of his chest connected with Rhett's hand.

Rhett frowned, clearly wondering how Link hadn't seen him stop, before disappearing into their shared office.  Link wanted to follow, wanted to sink into the comfortable leather couch and breathe in the air of creativity that filled the space.  But he wasn't allowed, so he waited until Rhett returned, a small radio in hand.  They resumed their walk, making their way back to a metal staircase that led to the roof. 

From the top of the building, Link could feel more of a breeze in the air, and he praised himself for thinking to wear a sweater.  Rhett brushed off two white lounge chairs and set the radio between them, docking his phone into it and turning it on low.  Placing their Styrofoam boxes between their knees, they lowered into the chairs and looked up, seeking out the few stars that could penetrate the city's hazy atmosphere.

It was not the excitement Link expected, but he smiled despite himself, appreciating Rhett's choice.  They could have gone anywhere, thrown themselves in with any given crowd at a movie, a bar, a bowling alley, but Rhett had chosen to plant them at the top of their shared building, their own creative kingdom, and he'd chosen to let them be alone. 

"This is good.  I like this," Link said, raising his hands to rest them behind his head.  His left shoulder ached in protest, but he persisted, stretching tight muscles.

"Glad you approve.  Don't let your dinner get cold.  Colder."

Link chuckled and sat up straight, opening his lid and pulling out a palm-full of fries.  They ate quietly, listening to the radio blend into the soundtrack of the city, breathing easy in the isolation of each other's company.

But the silence could not last forever. Eventually, they stopped picking at their meals, set their boxes near the radio, and leaned back, heads angled toward each other, eyes skyward.

"Did you come up here while I was out?  Hang out on the roof and ponder your future as a one-man show?" Link asked playfully.  Rhett grunted, eyebrows flashing upward at the question. 

"I did not.  I wasn't here.  I told you that.  I didn't leave San Bernardino."

It was Link's turn to frown.  The information felt familiar, but hearing it spoken aloud hit him with an unexpected weight.

"Yeah," he responded quietly, pretending not to notice Rhett looking over at him.  "Yeah, I knew that.  I was kidding."  He clenched his jaw under Rhett's obvious scrutiny, sighing when he finally looked away.

"I wouldn't do a one man show.  I'm pretty sure you know that," Rhett said factually.

"Your loss.  You could get a good year out of it.  Six months of people feeling sorry for you; six months of people placing bets on how long you'll keep on.  I wouldn't dismiss it so quickly, man."

Rhett laughed.  "That's messed up.  But since I have your blessing..."

"I didn't say that.  I don't want you profiting off my death.  How dare you?"  Link smiled when Rhett's laugh intensified. 

"I'm not sure I need your approval.  You won't be there."

Link laughed, cheering, "That's the spirit!" 

The topic was grim, but the ease with which they batted it about seemed to lighten Rhett's mood, easing away the tension that Link couldn't quite pin down.  He'd felt Rhett's stiffness in his own bones, but the sound of their laughter helped it shake it off some.  But Link wanted to rid them of it completely, so he did what he knew how to do.  He pushed.

He leaned down to the radio and cranked the dial up to its full volume.  A cheerful folksy song had just started, a bright guitar rhythm driving beneath an airy melody, tingling through his muscles and compelling him to move, and not move alone.

"While I'm still alive, though, you should dance with me," Link said as he started to stand, extending his hand toward Rhett, who took a long breath to just look at it, suspended between them, a physical promise of an experience both novel and timeless.

Link tilted his head, floating in the pause.  He could remember, though hazily, bounding around his own kitchen, their hands intertwined and bodies not far behind as they sang to each other.  He had found comfort in the weightlessness of dancing, and he wanted to recapture it, relive the moment.  Rhett's hesitance tried to shake him.  It tried to cut through the cloud of his good mood and shine an unwelcome light on the distance between them.  But for this moment, Link refused to be unnerved.  It paid off.

Rhett smiled and rolled his eyes as he took the hand offered.  Link grinned at the gesture: Rhett was careful to not actually use his hand for leverage.  He stood up fully on his own accord while Link started swaying, smiling fully when he was taken in Rhett's arms.  Their feet shuffled between each other, scraping the rooftop as they paired their steps, cautiously leaning into one another. 

One particularly deep breath filled Link's nose with the myriad of scents that was Rhett: a familiar deodorant, a trace of sandalwood.  He had learned long ago that the sense of smell was most closely connected to memory, and as he breathed Rhett in, his head swam.  The air at this proximity was different, warmer.  It carried a unique pulse made of two distinct heartbeats.  It was addictive, and threw Link headfirst into cracked and glittering recollections of brushing closely by each other in the doorways of the offices below, lying next to each other on his couch, entwining themselves in his own bed.  His stomach fluttered at the thought, his imagination creatively filling in all the frustrating gaps in the memory.  He threw himself into the work, using it to distract him from a surprising flutter of grief that wanted to accompany it.

"For a man dancing on a rooftop, you sure look serious," Rhett said quietly.  Link opened his eyes and looked up at Rhett, sighing as the confusion faded away. 

"Ssh," he replied, lifting his hands to encircle Rhett's neck.  "This is my favorite part," he bluffed, pulling a face as soon as the words left his lips, unsure of where they came from.

"You know this song?" Rhett tried to ask before being hushed again. 

They swayed together, each now listening more closely. 

_Well, you fell on the concrete and nearly broke your ass, and you were bleeding all over the place.  And I rushed you off to the hospital.  Do you remember that?_

_Yes, I do._

_Well, there's something I never told you about that night._

_What didn't you tell me?_

_While you were sitting in the backseat smoking the cigarette you thought was gonna be your last...I was falling deep, deeply in love with you.  And I never told you 'til just now._

As Link enjoyed a laugh rumbling through him, he thought he felt Rhett shiver.

"Cold?" he asked Rhett's chest.

"Not at all."

The answer made Link smile.  He looked up again, catching Rhett's gaze as he let his fingertips glide into his hair. 

"You were right.  This is better than the live music," he said, matching the grin that pulled at Rhett's lips. 

"I somehow didn't foresee this part," Rhett confessed, pressing more tightly to Link's lower back.  "But I'm okay with it."

"Ooh, okay.  Pretending this wasn't a date?  You coy bastard."

Rhett laughed, shaking his head.  "Well, I don't know."

"What did you do today?"

"Stayed in.  Cleaned the inbox, watched a movie."

"And yet waited to shower until right before you left?  It's a date."

They said nothing for a long beat as Rhett conjured his reply.  It surprised Link.

"You have the nose of a dog, you know that?"

They laughed, and Link stepped back, grabbing Rhett's hand and spinning slowly beneath it, resuming their dance in earnest.  He was free in the movement, leading Rhett around the limited open space of the roof. 

One song bled into another and into another, letting them alternate between semiwild choreography and close, quiet sways in which to catch their breath.  They cracked easy jokes and made faces entirely too serious, rarely failing to make each other laugh.  A giddiness had crept up on them, driving them to dance closer together, to pull each other tighter, to look more directly into each other's faces and plainly enjoy what they saw.  Link sensed the energy rippling through Rhett every time a broad palm landed on his back or gripped his waist, fingers splaying further each time, wanting to touch more and more of him. 

An hour had passed since they had first stepped onto the roof when Link could no longer stand the teasing of grazing past and leaning into each other.  When they'd fallen into another slow sway, he watched Rhett's face from the corner of his eye, waiting until some private thought caused his eyes to drift closed.  Then he struck, stretched upward, rocked onto his toes and tugged at Rhett's neck, bringing their lips together in a kiss that drew pleased sighs from them both.  Rhett smiled out of it, so Link pulled back and arched a knowing eyebrow.

"See?  You didn't resist.  It's a date."

Rhett nodded and ran his hand along the length of the arm resting on his shoulder.  "It's absolutely a date."

"Can we go inside?" Link asked, eyeing the door behind Rhett.  "My legs are tired."

"Were you not cleared for dancing?"

"Shut up."

 

* * *

 

 

They'd kept the lights off again, navigating by the glow of Rhett's phone as they made their way to their office.  Rhett had grabbed Link's hand before plunging into the darkness of the building, and even once in the safety of their own space, he had not let go.  He'd taken Link to the pair of desks to place the radio beneath his own.  When he stood back up, he realized he'd lost the lead, as Link had begun pulling him toward the couch.  His hand was dropped, though, as they approached, and he watched in cautious wonder as Link lay long across the leather sofa, stretching his legs across as much of the cushions as he wanted, leaving no room for Rhett to sit.  But Rhett knew he was not being asked to sit.

"So little room for me," he said, his voice low and playful.  He caught Link shrug in the shadow. 

"I told you my legs were tired.  You'll have to make do."

Rhett bit his lip as he approached the edge of the sofa, letting his knee drop beside Link's hip.  "I guess I'll just..." he mumbled, dropping his weight onto his knee and swinging his opposite leg over Link's, sitting back onto his heels and still towering over Link.  "I'll just settle in here..."

Link hummed, placing his hands on Rhett's thighs.  "This works.  This is just fine."  His palms felt warm, and as they slid languidly up and down his legs, Rhett could easily imagine them exploring more illicit territory.  He took those hands in his own and dragged them up his stomach, over his chest, and wrapped them around the back of his neck as he leaned forward, dropping into the kiss that waited for him on Link's lips. 

As they split the air between them, Rhett couldn't help but marvel at how easy it was to follow Link's direction.  With a shift of his hips and a tug of Rhett's hair, Link guided him into place, showing him where to fall so that they could more easily drink each other in.  Once caught in Link's arms, he knew there was no safety, and proved it to himself by turning his head for a breath.  As Rhett thought he would, Link attacked his neck, a volatile force made of sharp teeth and soft lips at which Rhett could not help but grin.  He panted as canines scraped his skin, biting down just enough to spark a fire in his stomach.  He groaned, helpless to control himself against the barrage, and just barely rocked his hips downward, grazing Link's pelvis with a whisper of friction.

"Oh, ho ho," Link sighed, pelvis twitching upward as his breath washed over Rhett's neck.  "You're gonna tease me, huh?"

"You gonna let me?" He could feel Link's lips smile against him.

"For now."

Rhett turned back into a heavy kiss in order to distract Link from the fresh shudder threatening to rock him.  It traveled out from his chest, rattling through his arms until his fingers trembled as they closed over the corners of Link's jaw.  He straightened his leg, lowering his weight onto Link and relishing in the sigh that followed, forgetting it the moment his lips were parted and a fervent tongue slipped across his own. 

And in that contact, that taste and touch, he was back on Link's couch, awash in quiet conflict and balancing precariously at the edge of a cliff.  He knew his options: behind him, decades of history rooted him to the comfortable, familiar roles of friend, business partner, confidant.  He knew the boundaries there, knew when glances lingered too long, when compliments sounded too sincere.  Their lives ran on parallel paths there, safe in their predictable distance, never intersecting.  But in front of him a chasm had opened, promising a new and powerful ecstasy, if he could only endure the fall it would take to get there.  The waters were dark and deep at the bottom, undoubtedly warm and consuming, but undeniably dangerous in all of their unknowns.  Once plunged into them, he could not say if they would let him resurface.  And he did not know if he could scale the cliff side again, if he could ever recover the life such a leap would leave behind.

Rhett pulled back when he realized he was growing lightheaded.  Beneath him, bright blue eyes narrowed in a dare, smoldering above a smirk of filthy insinuation.  And with that, the decision was made. 

He tasted those taunting lips as he pushed up onto his knees again.  His hands found Link's as he pulled back and started to stand, tugging him up off the couch.

"Come on," he whispered, directing Link toward the ladder to the loft.

 

 

 

Two plush blankets had been tossed from the backs of the recliners and spread onto the floor of the loft.  Both men had kicked off their shoes and dropped to the pallet, Link more carefully than Rhett.  They paused, face to face on bended knees, and Rhett raised his hand to Link's cheek, cradling it in his palm. 

"God, I missed you so much," he muttered without thinking.  Link exhaled and shook his head before wrapping his arms up around Rhett's neck again.  He had no response other than to smile, to quirk his eyebrows in question, and to chuckle from deep within his throat as Rhett lowered him to the floor.  The sound of it reverberated in Rhett's head.  He wanted more of it; he wanted to know if he could stop it short.  He wanted to know what else would elicit such a laugh; he wanted to know what would take away the breath behind it.

So he went searching for answers.

He pulled at the hem of Link's sweater, shoving it up under his arms, baring the skin of his stomach. In the little light they had, he found Link's gaze and held it as he lowered his head enough to plant a trail of feathery kisses along the waistband of his jeans.  As Link sucked a breath through his teeth, Rhett sank his own into the narrowest point of his waist, smiling at the instant yelp that was his reward. 

"Oh, you _are_ teasing me," Link groaned, pulling his shirt off before rolling his hips roughly against Rhett's chest.  Rhett laughed at the audacity, though his face had flushed at what he'd felt.  As he dragged his tongue along the edge of Link's lowest rib, Link rolled his head back and folded his arms over his eyes.  "Ooh, you aren't going to blindfold me again, are you?" he asked through a deviant smirk.

Rhett flinched, recognizing the opportunity as it presented itself in a single word, seeing the chance to discuss whatever misconception Link had been living with since he'd opened his eyes for the first time that year.  But here, with this warm and waiting body in his arms, Rhett did not want to talk. 

It could wait.  He could not.

"Ssh," he replied, moving to separate Link's fly, tuning in to the whimpers of anticipation that came with each graze of his fingers against the sensitive skin waiting beneath. 

He rested his forehead on Link's hip as he tugged at two layers of clothing, leaving them to bind restless legs mid-thigh as he took a single deep breath and threw himself from his cliff of indecision before reason could sink its hooks back into him.  

Link was heat and silk and salt in Rhett's mouth, and he sealed his eyes closed and let Link's fingernails scrape his scalp.  His hand wrapped around all that his mouth could not reach, and he worked quickly, desperately, outrunning a voice of doubt with every bob of his head. 

Beneath him, Link writhed, one fist twisting into the blanket at his side while the other buried itself in Rhett's wild hair.  Rhett glanced up and found him staring blindly at the ceiling, slipping into a haze of his own with every clipped gasp for air.  To bring him back, Rhett held his own breath and pushed himself further, grazing his nose against dark, trimmed hair.  His stomach flipped at Link's response: he groaned and sighed simultaneously, lifting his head to steal a brazen look at Rhett's work.  Rhett pulled back, suppressing the urge to cough, and glanced up. Link's face was a vivid blend of desperation and disbelief, brows knitted and jaw slackened as he pushed himself up onto his elbows, eventually letting his head roll backward as his body was toured by Rhett's tongue. 

Rhett ran his hands over Link's thighs, rounding their sides and digging his fingers into the flesh of his backside, grinning with the rush of power that came from such a gesture.  He had Link by the handful, nipping and kissing his inner thighs as he squeezed, watching as bony hips pulsed upward, rocking slowly, mesmerizing him with their wanton display.  It suited Link, to drip with sex like this, and Rhett couldn't look away. 

The pause had given Link time to form a plan, though, and he sparked it into action by surprising Rhett, curling up halfway and grabbing him by the collar, forcing him to lie over him while he kicked his pants off the rest of the way.  Fully undressed and on his back, Link scanned Rhett's body in an obvious once-over, then cocked his head, speaking quietly with his lips only centimeters away from Rhett's.

"Seems kind of unfair now, doesn't it?"

Link moved too quickly for a reply, so Rhett simply bit his lip and endured the touch of eager fingertips as they unbuttoned his shirt, pulled it apart, tore it from his arms.  He tried not to buck his hips as they slid down his stomach and set about removing his own tight jeans.  Where Link's arms could not reach, his feet took over, hooking into two waistbands and drawing them down until Rhett could kick them off for himself.  He was just about to laugh at the flexibility when those same legs wrapped around his waist and pulled him down, bringing their bodies together with enough heat and force to cause them both to groan. 

Rhett hadn't realized how he'd ached until he slid against Link for the first time, finding traces of relief with the slip and pull of skin on skin.  It was here, as he wrapped his hand around them both and heard their exhales align, that he caught a glimpse of the bottom.  He sensed, as he'd started to grow warm and short of breath, that he could lose himself in the pursuit of this high, in learning all of Link's favorite places to touch and be touched, in shutting out the dangers of the world that almost separated them and finding their sustenance in each other's bodies. 

It was exactly what he'd hoped it would be, muscles tensing and burning as short nails dug into his shoulder blades, as a voice as familiar as his own cried out in senseless pleasure before falling completely silent.  Link's chin stretched toward the ceiling as he gave himself over to the spasms of euphoria, and with his eyes glued to Link's body, Rhett couldn't help but follow, burying his face in the crook of Link's neck and holding tight. 

By the time he noticed that his arms had been shaking under his weight, Rhett had already been pushed onto his back.  Link had crawled up his side, falling to rest with his arms woven around dewy shoulders, gently cradling Rhett's head as he pulled it close to his chest. 

Rhett let his eyes stay closed, using the darkness to focus on all the sounds of Link: his slowing breaths, the occasional contented sighs, and what he could have sworn was a heartbeat, pure and strong and music to his ears.

 


	21. Floating

Link's eyelids were heavy, weighed down by what he recognized as a particularly deep and restorative sleep.  Yet when they opened, letting in only a fraction of the room's light, he knew he was not ready to wake.  He groaned in protest at his body's choice and rolled erratically onto his opposite side, facing the center of the bed.  In his fit, his hand slapped down on cool skin and he flinched, immediately moving to apologize.  But before he spoke, his eyes narrowed and widened, focusing in on a pleasing form.

Rhett lay with his hand under his head, blankets pulled only to his waist, leaving his bare chest open and victim to the back of Link's hand, and after only a moment's hesitation, the front of it, and all the fingers, too.  They first rested at the curve of his ribs, rising and falling with his hypnotic breaths.  But soon, they wanted to move, so they blazed a trail across his chest, sliding easily over smooth muscle and walking up toward his throat, breaking contact for a single second, only to land among the waves trying to curl at the back of his ear.  They danced there, the fingertips, parting strands of hair like grain in a field, twirling, grazing, and waiting to be noticed.  The longer they held their contact, the more Link struggled to lie still.

He propped himself on his arm and leaned in, looking down at Rhett from close range, knowing the attention would cause the sleeping man to stir.  But stir he did not.  Instead, his head fell to the side, facing away, exposing the length of his neck.

"Hey," Link whispered, watching Rhett's eyes for a flutter of consciousness that did not come. "Wake up," he tried again, his chest growing tight.  When Rhett still did not respond, Link bit his lip and leaned closer, whispering directly into his ear,  "You'll be glad you did."

He pressed his forehead against Rhett's temple, growing frustrated with his refusal to open his eyes.  Hell bent on seeing his strategy through, Link pushed himself up onto his knees, sweeping the blankets away in order to straddle Rhett's pelvis.  He watched his face closely as he lowered his weight, making a contact that should have left them speechless, but instead, left him huffing a sigh at his unconscious partner.

"Are you kidding me?" he asked, mostly to himself.

Rhett puffed an exhalation.  It was hardly an answer, so Link tried again, draping himself over Rhett's chest, inhaling the smell of him and letting time pass quietly through the connection.  But soon enough, he found he couldn't stand it any longer, and he turned his teeth on Rhett's neck, first nibbling at his pulse points, and when this went unrewarded, sinking his teeth more fully into unforgiving muscle.

Rhett sighed again, but otherwise did not move.  Link felt his own brow furrow as he pulled away, shimmying down and repositioning himself to lie fully on Rhett's chest, chin resting on his hands as he looked up at his face.

"Fine," he said, settling in for his watch.  "That's fine.  I can wait you out."

He heard the tinge in his voice as he spoke.  It was familiar, this suppression of panic mixed with a thrill of helplessness.  Rhett's reaction was not making sense; he was not behaving as he should.  And as Link rested against his ribs, he shook his head and let the recognition settle over him.

"I should've known," he said, pushing himself up in his excitement.  "I'm dreaming.  I don't want to control you.  Okay."  He exhaled and ran his hand through his hair, glad to feel his own tension drifting away.  He rolled off of Rhett and left the bed, tossing the blankets roughly back into place and heading for his bedroom door.

"I'll see myself out.  You're on your own," he called back to Rhett on his way.  But as he approached the threshold, his stomach lurched, and his body was overcome with a fresh and violent sense of dread.  It took him aback, so he froze, staring at the exit and unwilling to take it.

"Can't you just..." he started, slowly turning back, "can't you give me _something_?"  He padded carefully  back to the edge of the bed, stretching his hand out with new trepidation, resting it on Rhett's bicep.  He closed his eyes at the touch, trying to let it be enough.

"Come on," he whispered, gritting his jaw and shaking his head.  "Talk to me."

"What would you like to talk about?"

He flinched at the response, comprehending the words before the voice.  And just as quickly, he recognized that his body was cold, his neck aching in an unnatural position.  His eyes flew open and adjusted to the darkness as blankets were pulled up over him.  Christy pushed him the pillow that had slipped from under his head, and he resettled it at his shoulder, sighing at the relief.

"Talkin' in your sleep," she whispered, tapping the tip of his nose.

"What time is it?" he asked, just for something to say.

"Almost three.  You okay?" she asked, hesitant to break the quiet of the night.  He nodded, burrowing further into the blankets.

"Yeah.  Of course."

She nodded and closed her eyes again, fishing through the blankets for his hand and loosely interlocking their fingers.  He listened to her drift into sleep, trying to convince himself of his answer, to believe that he was fine when his heart was beating against his ribs, turning on him, trying to tell him otherwise.

Link had spent Saturday in a grinning haze, distracted by his own memories of his night with Rhett.  He'd start a task, making coffee or shaving his face, and slip away, internally taking off to Rhett's house, finding him in his own office and pinning him to his desk until he answered some unformed question, satiated some indescribable thirst.  Rhett would soften, take Link in his arms and whisper into his hair until he'd silenced the thin voice of doubt that had been whispering in a foreign tongue the whole time he'd been pinned on the studio loft’s floor.  Link would let the warmth wash through him, would practically feel Rhett's lips on his own, and then find himself staring into an empty carafe or a cup of dried shaving foam.

He had been too fixated on the images in his head to notice the wide berth Christy had been giving him.  She had not asked about his evening, had uttered little more than a sleepy greeting when he'd crawled into bed in the middle of the night after trying like a rebellious teenager to be quiet as he entered the sleeping house.  When he slid close behind her, hand finding the dip of her waist, she'd asked only if he'd showered.  He said he hadn't and she'd groggily groaned and sidled to her edge of the bed, slipping out of his hands but graciously giving him extra space, of which he happily took advantage.

He awoke after a dreamless sleep sprawled across the bed, sounds of a weekend morning clanging and sizzling from the kitchen.  When he'd made his way to the coffee maker, he'd wanted to laugh upon seeing Christy so focused on whisking eggs that she didn't even look up at him.  And whenever he came out of his stupors through the rest of the day, he'd often find her engrossed in a little distraction of her own, avoiding his gaze with a persistent half smile.  She'd said so little that day that he was momentarily surprised at hearing her voice in the dead of night, drawing him out of a dream that left him aching.

So, in the day that followed, Link moved about his home quietly, taking great care in every gesture, paying more mind to each step he took, looking a little more deeply into the eyes of his family.  They laughed him off, as they were used to doing, and flitted about him on courses that suddenly never ran too far from his reach.  In their own private moments, they sneaked away from their work and their play to find him on the couch or in his office, and casually cuddled up to him, slipping under his arm or lying on his lap, even if just for a few minutes.

He ran his fingers through their light hair, asked them about their days, their weeks, their school and social lives, and listened with great care as soft voices spoke to him about all the minutiae he'd missed when he was gone, either in the hospital or just in his rehab sessions.  And when prompted, he talked about learning how to stretch and strengthen the parts of his body that he'd gone a whole week without using, confessing his own surprise at how far out of shape a person could get with just a few days of complete stillness.

It was easy to talk about the physical work; he did as he was told, so the progress was quick and concrete.  What he did not talk about was the mental stretching he was having to do to put his brain back in order.  Here, in his home, the work was not hard.  He did not mind asking his children to tell him stories about their holiday, to recount their schedules or name their friends.  He even let them quiz him, playing along when they asked him about where he grew up or what their favorite meals were.  He liked calling them on their changing answers.  Christy was in on it, too, and she was a pro.  She slipped her tests into their daily life smoothly, asking him to remind her of his mother's phone number or asking him what Rhett had said in his toast at their wedding rehearsal dinner in the middle of a conversation about a friend's upcoming nuptials.  And as the days had gone on, he'd come to pass these little tests with ease, feeling more and more at home in his head, more certain of who and what he was in this house.

There were other roles that gave him more trouble.

His dream the night before had crept under his skin, inspired him in his restlessness to do as he'd done with his other close relations and work backward through his connection to Rhett.  While he tended not to buy too deeply into dreams, he did have to acknowledge that he'd hardly given Rhett much thought beyond all that he could not wait to do with him when they finally found themselves alone.  So, in the comfort of the late afternoon, when his house had gone quiet with private endeavors, he found his way to his bedroom and lay diagonally across the mattress, setting about a trip through his memory about how he and Rhett came to fall in love.

There was the initial gut punch of intimidation that came with meeting a Californian (regardless of his origin).

There was wandering to the river for the first, tenth, thirtieth time.

There was the camaraderie of Camp Caraway that he could only find at Rhett's side.

There was the eye contact as they kissed girlfriends at a party.

He made it as far as high school before he was interrupted by the minor crisis of a skinned knee that brought him into close quarters with his wife as she tended to their youngest.  He perched on the bathroom sink, handing her a wash cloth, the peroxide bottle, a bandage he'd carefully peeled open, all in the name of keeping his eyes off the blood trying to run down his son's leg.

Like the expert she was, Christy patched him up in what Link announced as "one minute flat" and sent him on his way, tears dried but gait affected with a comically overblown limp.  Before she could slip out the door behind him, though, Link extended his leg and barred her path.  She playfully rolled her eyes at the gesture and turned to face him.

"Yes?"

He looked closely at her face before narrowing his eyes and tilting his head.  "You ignorin' me?"

She sighed and closed her eyes in a mock exasperation.  "Do you feel ignored?  Do you want a Band-Aid on your knee, too?"

He straightened his back in indignation.  "Thank you and no thank you."  He softened, adding.  "I just feel a little...far apart."

"Hmm."

"Hmm," he repeated.  "You're not...mad about something?"

"Baby.  Be honest: do I not let you know when I'm mad?"

Images of thrown telephones and broken lamps pricked his memory, hardly meshing with the image of the gentle mother standing in front of him.  He grimaced and agreed anyway, nodding reluctantly.  She nodded with him.

"Okay, then," she said, turning to leave.  She stopped in the doorway and turned, asking, "Where were you?"

"What?"

"Were you napping?"

"Oh.  No.  Kind of.  Just dozing and thinkin'."

Her shoulder leaned on the doorjamb.  "About what?"

As it was wont to do, his mouth got away from him and curled into a deviant grin as he slid off the counter and into her space, purring quietly, "Want me to show you?"

Her eyes fluttered in a frenzy of surprised blinks, and as she sought for words, he leaned closer, nuzzling his nose into the crook of her neck, grazing his fingers over her shoulder as he pushed her hair back, exposing her skin to the warmth of his breath.

When he lowered to plant a kiss, she laughed to herself and answered quietly but surely, "Thank you and no thank you," as she turned and slipped out of the bathroom.

Left standing alone in the bright light, he sucked his lip between his teeth and chewed, repetitively conceding and contending that he may have —temporarily— lost his touch.

 

 

Trauma was new to the office, so Link couldn't help but notice how everyone dealt with his reappearance in unique ways.  Some asked detailed questions about his recovery; others sidestepped the absence altogether, simply asking him about his weekend and ignoring the faint yellow traces of a bruise still lingering at his cheekbone.  He did not mind recounting his rehab, or even retelling the story of the accident.

Still, the more he told it, the more he realized that most of the details of the story were informed by Rhett's version of the events.  He had a memory of his own, of standing at the top of the mountain, of crashing through the snow, of colliding with a tree, but somehow, he knew better than to discuss his version, with fuzzy images of Rhett's hand in his hair, of waking up in a warm white room.  It felt like a secret, a truth that he and Rhett had both been carefully maneuvering around.

What he could not avoid, though, was the sensation of being watched.  He'd been catching traces of it from the second Rhett pulled into his driveway that morning, and hours after arriving, after filming nearly thirty minutes worth of witty banter and easy laughter, after growing surprisingly tired under the lights of the set and the gaze of the camera, he felt the attention again, acutely, in the privacy of his own office.

"Are you looking at me?" Link asked as he typed out the closure of an email.  Behind him, Rhett hesitated, grunting in surprise before forming his response.

"I mean, at that moment..."

"Staring?  Were you staring at me?"

Rhett said nothing, but audibly huffed as he crossed his arms.  After a final click of his mouse, Link closed his laptop and spun in his chair, meeting the eyes he'd felt trained on him all morning.

"You got somethin' to say?" he asked, mirroring Rhett's posture by crossing his own arms.  Rhett's hands immediately moved to his knees, disallowing the imitation.

"You're on fire.  You haven't stopped since we got here."

"Worried I'll fry my brain?"

Rhett scrunched his nose, taking the lob as it came to him.  "It's so fragile."

Link blinked slowly, drawing out his deadpan non-reaction for all it was worth.  It made Rhett laugh at his own bad joke, at least until he buckled under the pressure of Link's attention.

"Yes, fine, alright.  I was staring at you.  Guilty," he confessed with a sheepish smile.

"That's fine."

Rhett's head tipped back.  "Oh?"

"I can't blame you."

Rhett laughed again, happily leaning into his admission and rubbing his eyes as Link continued.

"You've been on top of me all morning."

Link was right.  It had seemed coincidental, and perhaps it had been, but Rhett had never let himself wander more than a few feet from his side.

"You have a history of working yourself into the ground.  I just don't want you to overdo it.  I'm just a concerned friend."

"Okay," Link nodded, uncrossing his arms, "I'm not working now.  In fact, I'll be done for the day.  How's that?"

"I like it."

"It _is_ good to be back, though," Link said, taking a long look around the room and hardly hiding a smirk when his eyes scanned upward toward the loft overhead.  "I feel like I've been such a drain for so long.  It's good to feel productive again.  I think I was more excited to come back than I realized.  I didn't sleep very well last night."

"The anticipation of your grand return."

"Or maybe just seeing you again," he countered, the words coming out of nowhere.  They made him smile, and Rhett followed suit.

"Yeah?  Okay," he said, rolling his chair a little closer in order to nudge Link's foot with his own.  "Maybe I was a little anxious to see you, too."

"It's kind of nice to have the attention, actually.  I got the cold shoulder a little this weekend," he said, his smile falling with a pervasive sense of confusion.  Though he'd been looking at his own knees, from the corner of his eye he saw Rhett stiffen momentarily, and Link felt his stomach tighten.  "What?"

Rhett's brow lifted.  "What, 'what'? What?"

"What was that? You...flinched or something."

Rhett narrowed his eyes and shook his head, but Link didn't buy it.

"Yes, you did.  I mentioned Christy and you...did something.  What do you know that I don't?  Why would she be acting weird?" he asked, a slew of questions pouring from him quicker than he could sense them coming together.  "Was she mad about Friday night?  She knew we were going out that night; she was fine with it last week.  Why wouldn't she be fine with it on Saturday?  Did you say something to her?"

Rhett backed up, straightening in his chair.  "No, man.  I didn't say anything.  Don't turn on me, now.  I'm on your side."

Link paused, taking a long moment to look into Rhett's face.  He saw concern, heartfelt and deep, but he saw no reason to pursue his rapid-fire line of questioning.  Especially when those warm eyes seemed to want to calm and comfort him.  He decided to let them.

He sighed before brushing off the topic altogether.  "She wasn't a fan of me coming back to work.  She was probably mad that I wasn't taking more time off.  Everyone thinks I'm going to overdo it.  What's the worst that could happen, honestly?"

"Medically, I couldn't guess at specifics, but I'd assume that piling exhaustion onto a healing brain injury has the potential to do more harm than good."

"I've been here for four hours.  I've been sitting at a desk for three of them.  I'm good."

"I just put in an order for lunch.  Let's eat and call it a day, like you said."

Link liked the idea, and felt himself smile again as another one came to light.  "Let's wait for it on the couch.  You know, so I can rest properly."

Rhett laughed and extended his hand in invitation.  Link stood and kicked off his shoes, crossing to the couch and waiting.  As Rhett approached, Link nodded toward the sofa; Rhett understood the wordless directive and lay on his side, pressing tight to the back cushion, leaving plenty of space for Link to lie next to him.  When he did, their hands found each other on his chest and Rhett buried his nose in Link's hair, breathing him in.

For a long while, they were quiet, simply leaning against each other and enjoying the contact that ran the length of their bodies.  Link relaxed into the partial embrace, trying to ignore the muscles in his back that had already begun to protest his workday.  When Rhett pressed a light kiss into his hair, he felt a thin sense of nostalgia run through him and sighed.

"Hmm?" Rhett mumbled at the sound.  "What's all this sighing about?"

"This is just nice.  It's comfortable.  It makes sense," Link answered, seeking the source of a small, inexplicable sadness as he spoke.  "It feels like we've been doing this forever."

Rhett hummed an agreement and nuzzled closer into Link's neck, planting kisses both feathery and suggestive just below his ear.  He allowed it, closing his eyes at the contrast of the soft scratch of Rhett's beard and the cool smoothness of his lips.

"But—" he heard himself say, cursing himself the second Rhett stopped to listen, "but also...I know it's stupid, but bear with me..."

"Mmhmm," Rhett said, wrapping his arm more tightly around Link's stomach.

"It also kind of doesn't."

As the words came out, Link expected Rhett to laugh.  He wanted one of those powerful brows arched at his folly; he wanted an incredulous voice to question him, to label him confused and laugh him off as it had done hundreds of times before.  In a subconscious search for dismissal, he got sincerity.

"Oh.  Well, that's okay.  You feel how you feel.  Nothing wrong with that."

Link closed his eyes and considered the response.  He appreciated the permission to feel uncertain, and yet it tried to frustrate him further.  As a long arm tightened around his ribs, he opted to allow himself the placation, and he sighed with fresh content.

"Okay.  I'll feel how I feel."  After a pause, he added, "I feel hungry."

"Lunch is in progress.  I can distract you for a while until it gets here..."

"I'll allow it."

Link felt the vibrations of Rhett's quiet laugh through his arm, followed by a shifting of weight beside him that ended with him on his back, his knees firmly straddled.  He kept his eyes closed as hands slid up his forearms, wandered across his shoulders, and disappeared behind his head, cradling it carefully, scratching soft circles over his scalp.  He hummed his appreciation, and it was caught by patient lips hovering a breath away, grazing his own as they taunted each other and relished in anticipation.   

Link's right hand connected with Rhett's side, and he lifted his head, closing the gap between them.  Darkness had brought gravity to their evening spent in the loft, but in the light of day, neither could help smiling against the other's lips, breaking several kisses to suffer a helpless grin, as if neither could believe what they were doing.

Soon enough, Link's left hand had mirrored his right, holding Rhett by the waist, as if he had any control.  With Rhett distracted by planting rows of kisses along his jaw, Link let his hands slide down, palming Rhett's backside and giving it a squeeze that bordered on rough.  He gasped in surprise and laughed again, pushing himself up onto his knees, looming over Link with a lighthearted warning expression.

"Gettin' a little handsy."

Link pulled his hands to his chest and raised them in apology.  Before Rhett could accept it, though, they shot back to his waist and held him down as Link drove his hips upward, unabashedly grinding against him.  He watched Rhett's face closely, memorizing the sight of his eyes momentarily drifting half-closed as he rode a single slow wave and sighed a barely-audible whimper.  It lasted only a second before Rhett shook his head and pushed himself up off the couch, leaving Link cold but laughing nonetheless.

"Alright.  No, no," Rhett protested, shaking his hands in front of him, clearly trying to escape whatever hold Link had just had on him.  Link bit his bottom lip, feeling refreshingly powerful, and rested his head in his hands, letting Rhett pace the room as he spoke.  "We can't be doin' that.  Not at work.  Not while...not like this."

Even as the knock sounded at the door, signaling the arrival of their meal, Link couldn't help the devious smirk pulling at the corner of his lips.  He'd kept it to himself as they ate, said nothing of the subtle flame of a burgeoning addiction burning low in his stomach.  It flared when he caught Rhett looking at him, and he found himself seeking more glances and holding them longer, searching Rhett’s face for hints of a shared desire.  When papers were crumpled and boxes thrown out, Rhett reached for his keys, and Link felt his smile falter, his spirit weighed down by the thought of being dropped off at home alone.   He clung to Rhett more closely, following his departing tour of the studio at arm’s length, barely waiting until they reached his car to grab his hand and weave their fingers together.  If Rhett noticed the increased attention, he pretended not to, saying nothing of the possessive shift in Link’s demeanor, of the tight grip on his hand during quiet drive back to his house, of the extended goodbye in the driveway.  Instead, Link was left to endure his burn alone in both amusement and confoundment, shaking his head at his reflection in the foyer's mirror as he walked into a somber, studious house.

But the feeling was persistent.  The thought of Rhett tugged at his attention as his kids talked about their school projects until he was banished from the kitchen for distracting them and sent away for an afternoon nap.  The sound of the helpless sigh ricocheted in Link’s head as he lay across his bed, fingers twitching toward the phone in his pocket until he simply took it out and tossed it onto the nightstand.  A faint longing wrapped around him with arms cold and weak, making him long for a warmer, stronger embrace in which, though he'd never admit it, he could let himself feel small and cared for.

His sleep was unmemorable, and it hardly left him feeling refreshed.  He awoke to a chorus of calls to dinner and shuffled into the dining room rubbing his eyes and trying to clean the slate of his mind.  For a while, it worked, and he talked and laughed with his family as he'd do any other night. He took over cleanup to keep his hands occupied, giving his thoughts a healthy shot at distraction.  Eventually, he sank into his favorite corner of the couch as they watched a movie, Christy settling into the opposite end and losing interest halfway through, choosing to look at her phone for an hour instead.  But once the house had gone dark and quiet with the heavy fog of night, the compulsive flame sparked back to life, consuming him completely as he reached for his phone.  

_-What’re you doing?_ he sent, rolling his bottom lip between his teeth as he quickly turned the brightness of his screen down as low as possible.  He had to wait a solid minute for a response.

_-Sleeping._

_-Liar._

_-What are YOU doing?  What do you want?_

Link blinked several times at his phone, unprepared for the question to be turned back on himself.  With a furtive glance over his shoulder, he let his fingers type what they wanted.

_-Don’t know.  Couldn’t stop thinking._

_-?_

_-About you._

_-I’m going to sleep._

_-I’m serious._

The textual silence stared him in the face, threatening to unnerve him, to cause him to accept Rhett’s dismissal and call it a night.  

And then, _-Like what kind of thinking?_

_-Wondering when we’ll get together next.  Non-work-wise._

_-You want to get dinner or something?_

_-Or something._

_-Busy this weekend.  I’ll see what I can do._

Link sighed, craving more than the answers he was receiving, and responded reluctantly.

_-Good enough, I guess._

The conversation died there, his phone going dark long enough to drive him to put it down.  He’d settled into his pillow and started to close his eyes when it lit up a final time.

_-Go to sleep & dream about me.  Make it good.  I’ll want to hear all about it. _

Link turned his phone face-down and rolled onto his back, letting one hand slide down his body as he closed his eyes and chased his sleep, trying desperately to do as he was told.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much gratitude to missingparentheses for previewing this particular chapter and letting me know where the words weren't pulling their weight. I'd never had a beta reader before; now I understand the hype.


	22. Itching

The week had been long.  Link had kept to his half-day schedule, allowing Rhett to drive him home after lunch so he could rest. From Tuesday on, Rhett had returned to the studio, regularly finishing all the tasks he'd said could wait until the next morning.  By Thursday, he knew that Link had caught on, but they'd let it go unaddressed.  This was how they kept their balance: where one stepped down, the other stepped up. 

As he always had, Rhett enjoyed the work, but it did not take long for him to realize that he was more productive in the solitary afternoons.  Without Link sitting only a few feet away, he had no reason to glance over his shoulder, no need to spend energy finding ways to make him laugh.  Even when they never gave in to it, it was freeing to be without the temptation to lock the door, drag him up to the loft, and forget their work altogether. When the office was Rhett's alone, his focus was streamlined, and he found himself flying through projects with ease, if for no other reason than to impress Link the next morning.  The work ethic was familiar; the motives had changed.

Still, days that were so concretely divided between light work and laser focus exhausted him when tied end to end.  He dragged himself home in the evenings and collapsed on the couch.  And to make everything harder, his body insisted on clinging to sensory memories of his mornings.  The second he closed his eyes, he felt Link's arms wrapping around him as they had on their office sofa, or he caught whiffs of an aftershave he'd never used on himself.  In the safety of his home, Rhett longed to relax into the feelings, to lie back and enjoy the thoughts of Link trying to flood him. 

But as much as his mind reached for those memories, it also stretched toward the phone in his pocket, and more directly, the images it contained. 

Link had been busy.

In those afternoons, when he knew that Rhett was in their office alone, he'd developed a habit of sending colorful messages.  Most were texts, swinging wildly from tender notes to imaginative suggestions, and even without receiving responses, they came one at a time, spread over the later hours of each day that week, until they became regular enough to feed a small, constant electricity streaming through Rhett's body, one that popped and crackled every time his phone vibrated.

- _Remember when you let me kiss you on the roof?_

_-Remember when my legs were wrapped around you?_

_-I think I'd like to do that again._

_-I'm going to do that again._

_\- I'm going to do much more than that._

_-I'm going to kiss you again.  Everywhere.  With my whole mouth._

_-I'm going to eat you alive._

_-You just have to let me.  You can just stand there for all I care.  Or lay there.  I'll do everything._

_-I'm going to take the breath out of you.  And more._

Some of Link's messages, though, were carefully planned photos, designed to look quick and thoughtless despite perfectly framing a close shot of his mouth as his teeth sank into his lower lip, or giving just a glimpse of his fingertips dipping below the waistband of his own jeans.  Rhett had been answering a string of emails on Friday afternoon when he received a photo of an unbuttoned fly.  The bared skin above it had been tinted an oddly warm color as light had filtered through an unseen red surface. 

 _\- Dropped you off two hours ago.  Where'd you end up?_ Rhett typed into his phone as he leaned against the inside of the office door he'd just locked.

_\- Campin'._

_\- In your yard?_

_\- Checking the old tent for holes.  Still works.  And instant privacy._

The message was followed by an image of Link's forearm resting on his own bare stomach, landing his hand in an obvious destination that had wound up just out of frame. 

 _\- You're supposed to be resting,_ Rhett sent, lowering back into his desk chair and laying the phone down.  The response he earned was final, sending a rush of heat through him before convincing him that it was time to return to his real job.

_\- I can think of nothing more relaxing._

Rhett's brain had no trouble conjuring the rest of an image of Link lying on the ground, clothes strewn about, with his hands traveling lazily down his body.  And he carried this image with him through the rest of his workday.  It tied itself to his consciousness and followed him home, glowing behind his eyes once he finally crossed his own threshold and lowered yet again on the couch in his living room.  He was ready to let the image come to life, to let himself drift in its vivid color and release some of the tension it caused him.  He could make an evening of the thought, scrolling through his phone and mentally illustrating the story his texts told.  Of course, the phone was redundant.  He had those messages memorized.

But indulging his imagination was easier said than done.

 

"Are you going to eat?" Jessie called out, waking him from the beginnings of an evening nap.  He scrambled into the dining room, cursing himself for letting so much time go by on an night he had set aside specifically for his family.  When he reached the table, he found them already halfway through their meal.  His boys were hiding smiles, amused at their mother's choice to leave him in the living room for so long.

"Sorry, guys.  I must have fallen asleep," he said, settling quickly into his place at the table, but not missing Jessie's muttered response.

"Must have."

In lieu of asking about everyone's days, Rhett ate in sleepy silence.  He chose to ignore the unnecessary force of his wife's knife sawing through her chicken and the quiet sighs that fell from her lips between small and heartless bites.  He watched his kids finish their dinners quickly while he was only just starting his own, and when they asked to leave the table, he quietly deferred to Jessie.  In a move that surprised him, she released them, then followed their lead in clearing her own place and taking off for the kitchen.

This was harder to ignore, for now Rhett ate in isolation.  But he did eat.  He had to: his body was desperate for the nourishment he'd somehow neglected to give it in his packed workday.  And now he was feeling neglected in a new way.

Shepherd and Locke took off for the living room, starting up a video game of questionable appropriateness while their mother tended to the kitchen.  Pots and glassware clanged and scraped across countertops, victims of unspoken energy. The sound accompanied the quick end of Rhett's meal and only ceased when Jessie turned away from the sink and found him leaning against the doorjamb. She flinched and sighed, extending her hand for the plate in his.

"What's going on?" he asked, holding his ground even as she gestured more emphatically toward the dish.  He kept his eyes on her as he stepped past her, taking care of the few remaining pieces in the sink and closing the dishwasher with a certain finality, giving her nowhere to hide.  He lifted his eyebrows in a silent restatement of his question.  She sighed through her nose.

"Just trying to get this meal finished."

"I noticed the rush," he replied, aiming for and landing just shy of nonchalance.  She shrugged.

"Sorry.  You passed out.  Again."

"You could've woken me up.  I wouldn't have cared."

"Well.  That's easy to say," she shot back, reaching for the dishtowel on the counter and tucking it beneath the sink.  All the while, her eyes scanned the room, looking for a way to keep her hands busy.  Rhett felt his neck stiffen.

"Care to explain?"

"Seems pretty straightforward, champ."

"Don't 'champ' me."

"Don't play dumb."

He scoffed and leaned against a counter, simultaneously settling in for a fight and protecting his back.

"Ooh, I'd love to be _playing_ dumb.  But I guess I'm really an idiot.  I wish I was as perceptive as you think I should be.  I _wish_ I could read everything going on in your head, that I could just magically know everything behind all this silent treatment and shitty looks you've been giving me lately."

"Then open your fucking eyes."

He knew she had a habit of letting colorful language fly; this was not what sent a chill through him.  It was the quietness of her voice, the low rumble that bordered on animalistic that made his press back until the edge of the counter dug into him, holding him there as she squared to him and narrowed her eyes.

"You're not here anymore.  You're gone when you're at work, but then even when you walk in the door, you're still gone.  You're still there.  Or wherever.  Elsewhere.  Not here, not with us.  Not with me."

"What?  I intentionally left tonight open to be here.  I turned down plans.  And it's not like I'm working any longer hours than I ever have—"

"Don't," she barked, before lowering her voice again.  "Don't.  It's not the hours, and you know it.  And if you don't, then we have an even bigger problem."

He took a deep breath, mentally skirting the issue but pretending to grasp it for her sake, letting himself fall fully into survival mode.  "So what do we do?  What do you need me to do?"

The question made her rub her eyes.  "I don't know.  I don't know how to balance this.  I know what it is, and I know that it's temporary, but that doesn't mean I can just carry on like it isn't there."

"What?  What is this 'it'?" he asked, crossing his arms.  She scowled, but he persisted.  "Indulge me."

Jessie glanced at the doorway before answering, stepping closer so that she could speak more quietly. " _It_ is you and him.  You're all tied up in him in this new way, and you're...you're just _detached_ from us now.  And I get it; it's new and exciting, I'm sure.  Whatever.  We did the same thing.  But we were kids, and we didn't have families and lives to upend in the process."

"Nothing is being upended here," he tried to say, though the immediate shake of her head dismissed the notion.  

"You don't get to decide that.  You don't just get to come home exhausted and distracted every night and spend all your time glancing at your phone, waiting for him to send you something that will make you smile more than I do, and then say that we're all fine. You don't get to do that.  It's not your call to make."

They stared at each other, each catching their breath in a suddenly oxygen deprived room.  He didn't know what to say, so to avoid fanning the flames, he kept his mouth shut and endured the tension as best he could.  Eventually, he was rewarded by a softening of her eyes as she finally exhaled. 

"I just...back when...you first knew, I said I wanted – needed – to feel like I still have you, too.  Like you still want me."

"I do.  I do want you, Jessie."

"You're not doing a great job of showing it."

He sighed and nodded, accepting the criticism and unfolding his arms.  "Okay.  That's fair.  I understand that."

Her response came in the form of a loaded stare, obvious anticipation of his coming conclusion.

"I'm here.  I'm with you.  Let me prove it," he spoke quietly, voice barely above a whisper.  She halfheartedly stepped backward as he stepped forward, not fully buying her own repulsion.  He waited, letting her breathe out the remainder of her doubt before he moved again, enveloping her in his long, warm arms.  She rested her head against his chest, but refused to lower her arms from their defensive position at her own, unconvincingly ready to strike at the next wrong word.   

He stroked her hair several times, watching it fall between his fingers as she relaxed into him.  After a long moment of quiet he asked, "Early bedtime?" and grinned when, after a long and thoughtful pause, he felt her smile against him before mumbling her answer.

"We'll see."

 

 

 

It was not easy; she had clearly not meant for it to be. 

Rhett had had to move slowly, working his way around Jessie's objections by talking her into their shower and taking it upon himself to bathe her, leaving her to close her eyes and relax into the contact of careful hands soaping, massaging, rinsing her tired body, replacing threads of strain with wordless promises and reluctantly loosening muscles. 

He had dried her, covering her in an oversized towel and somehow making her laugh.  He had used this moment of vulnerability to hoist her over his shoulder, ignoring protests meant to protect his own back as he carried her into their bedroom and dropped her carefully on their bed, absorbing with his lips the last remaining laughs of disbelief that had collected on hers.  He timed his inhalations with hers, listening to every sound she made as he covered her body with his own, propping himself on his forearms and weaving his fingers into wet hair, scratching gently at her scalp and holding himself back when a smooth leg wrapped around his waist.

He'd known this could not work without restraint.  He'd known she needed to feel his devotion, so he took his time with his worship.

He had planted his prayers all over her body, leaving no curve unthanked, no inch unappreciated.  He had breathed his faith across her neck, traced with his tongue the hallowed ground of her thighs, left her silent save for the quiet gasps and sighs that accompanied an elegant and commanding roll of her hips. 

He'd wanted to watch her, to keep his eyes open and be receptive to all she had to offer.  But on this night, once they'd found their way into their routine, she'd not offered much.  Her touch had turned rare and robotic, fueled more by muscle memory than passion or intensity.  She kept her arms to herself rather than locking them around his neck.  When her eyes were not closed, they wandered the room, glazed and staring, whether lost in pleasure or something else, he could not tell.  Yet even when he needed it most, he sacrificed his breath to sink his lips into hers, to taste what she'd allow him.  But his kisses lived brief, chaste lives on her mouth.  She sighed and turned out of them, though in the moment, he convinced himself she simply needed to inhale.  A patient, quiet part of him knew better.

And that patient, quiet part waited until she had tensed around him and rolled away, letting her heart slow as the last traces of a well-practiced smile slid off her face.  It coiled inside of him as he turned onto his back and watched her pad across the room, disappear into the bathroom for a while, and reappear just as quietly and with just as little eye contact.  It let her peck his cheekbone, slip under the covers, and with a tap to her lamp, plunge the room into darkness before it sprung, consuming him from the inside out.

It started as a subtle craving, a harmless desire to dig the phone out of the pocket of his pants and simply check for any new messages.  But to be polite, he did not move until Jessie had fallen into a heavy sleep.  Once her breathing had gone quiet and even, he slipped out of the covers and crept toward the bathroom, leaving the lights off as he felt around the floor for his discarded clothing.  Upon touching a hand to his jeans, he sank onto his knees and turned, sitting on the floor and leaning against the cabinet, gently pushing the door to with his foot as his fingers flew to unlock the device. 

With a notification of a single new message, the subtlety wore thin, and the quiet feeling started to reveal itself for what it was. 

Rhett didn't notice that he'd held his breath as he opened the message, but when he read the few words Link had sent, it left his body in a helpless sigh. 

_\- 48 hours is a long time.  Think you'll make it?_

Link was teasing him, pulling at his attention, trying to make Rhett look, so that he could unabashedly look back.  Rhett could feel it in earnest now, from his place on the bathroom floor; he recognized that he was desperate to intertwine himself with this force both new and familiar.  Link's wholly undivided attention was rare, and he'd grown addicted to it with the first real hit.  He was restless, itching for the feeling of being wanted, yearning for the novelty of their unique electricity as he looked back through the handful of pictures Link had been sending him all week. 

And like any good drug, Link made him reckless.

He pulled himself up and dressed in the clothes left on the floor.  A glimpse out into the bedroom found Jessie still sleeping soundly, giving him all the permission he needed to swipe a pair of deck shoes off the floor and creep out of the bedroom.  In under a minute, he was pulling the door to his car closed as quietly as possible, thanking himself for parking on the street as he turned the key and brought it to life.  He turned off the radio and drove in silence, waiting until he reached the stop sign at the end of his street to send a message of his own.

_-Wake up._

 


	23. The Universe

  _-I'm coming over.  Now._

Link blinked away the last remnants of sleep as he watched his phone for updates that did not come.  He took off his glasses and reset them on the nightstand, then stared into the darkness of his bedroom, blinked a few times more, and picked them up again.  It took several minutes before he knew what he was doing, but in the meantime, his body carried him silently out of his bedroom, past the quiet rooms of his children, and down the hallway to his living room, where he placed himself in front of the picture window. 

He reached for a blanket from the back of the couch and wrapped it around his shoulders, holding it together at his chest and consequently pressing his phone into himself in the act.  He had not looked at it since the last message.  For a moment, he wondered if Rhett would still show, since he'd never sent a response to the warning. 

But it was Rhett.  Of course he would.

So Link had set himself up near his own front door, waiting for an imminent arrival. 

He watched his front yard from over the back of his sofa, resting his head on his arms as he'd seen his children do while eagerly waiting for their own friends to arrive.  His muscles tensed in anticipation as headlights swept across his street; they relaxed when a truck drove past his house on its way to some other midnight destination.  The roads were bare, though, so spotting a familiar car was easy.

As he approached the house, Rhett shut off his headlights.  Link froze in place, watching the car closely, partly expecting it to come back to life and disappear.  But it didn't.  Rhett stepped out and pressed the car door closed quietly, notably scanning the neighbors' windows for movement before turning toward Link's door. 

Inside, Link had waited for Rhett to turn toward the house before dropping the blanket from his shoulders and delivering the text he'd waited so patiently to send: _-Back yard._

Link planted himself on a step at the edge of his back patio, out of view of any bedroom windows, and he listened to deft hands open the metal gate around the side of his house.  His eyes had adjusted to the darkness of his living room, so the addition of the bright half moon outside made the night feel bright.  He could see clearly as Rhett turned the corner and let a wide grin spread over half his face. 

"Hey," Rhett whispered, approaching slowly, quietly.  Link nodded from his place on the concrete step. 

"Interesting part of the neighborhood for you to be prowlin' around in the middle of the night."

Rhett's smile grew, and he dropped next to Link on the step, mimicking his posture with arms wrapping around his knees.  He chewed his lip and let his brow flicker up as he looked out into the yard. 

Link figured Rhett had something to say, so he stayed quiet, letting him pinpoint whatever words must have been gnawing at him.  But the seconds wore on, fading into minutes of silence, save for the few brave insects that chattered around the edges of the patio. 

"So, you just wanted to look at all my rocks?" Link prodded, following Rhett's gaze out to the landscaping stones that made up the upper half of his yard.  Rhett hummed in amusement and finally leaned back, propping his elbows on the step behind him and stretching out, face tipping up toward the sky as his eyes slipped closed. 

Link tightened his grip on his knees, intentionally stretching the muscles of his low back as he waited for further indications of a response.  He took every opportunity he could lately to flex and stretch various regions of himself, both thanking them for clinging to life and encouraging them to return to their previous states of fitness.  He'd clawed his way back to consciousness and hardly felt like leaving his body behind.  Nobody noticed; he'd been living a life of perpetual motion for years.  So next to Rhett, who was slow and measured, quiet and patient, though Link knew not what he was waiting for, it was hard to wait all the same.  Still, he tried.

Rhett breathed deeply, opening his eyes on a drawn out exhale, and blinked at the moon as he finally spoke: "You're in my head."

Link felt his lip curl up with an undeniably mischievous glee.   "Oh?"

"You've been sending those messages.  Those pictures."

"Oh, those," he replied, showing great restraint in his nonchalance.

"Those.  What were you going for with those?"

He hadn't seen the question coming, so Link snorted a laugh.  "I don't know.  Just little reminders, I guess."

"As if I'd forget?"

"It could happen."

"It couldn't."

Link liked that answer.  It helped to cover over the dark corner of his mind where disbelief and insecurity had been dancing together.  It had seemed, after all, that they'd taken up permanent residence, triggering bouts of confusion and memories both crystalline and maddeningly hazy, and his ability to rest was weakened by their noise.  He turned his head and yawned into his arm, shrugging sheepishly when he turned back to find Rhett raising an eyebrow at him.

"Sorry.  I wasn't sleeping all that well before your text."

  "Oh yeah?"

"Yeah.  It took longer to fall asleep than usual, and once I was out, I had this weird dream.  It's happened twice now."  As he spoke, his eyes lowered to the points of his knees.  Rhett leaned forward. 

"Oh?" He drew the word out, letting it drip with innuendo.  Link snickered and shook his head.

"Not like that.  Or, actually...maybe it was.  But I have no memory of anything _like that_ happening," he explained, his voice quieter and eyebrows waggling.  But as he recounted the experience, he could not stop his eyes from going distant as he internally worked to make some kind of meaning out of what he was about to say.  "I was in my bed.  _You_ were in my bed."

"Good start, no matter how it ends."

"That pretty much _is_ where it ends for you.  You were asleep, and I'd woken up, and I wanted you to wake up, too.  But you wouldn't."

"Was I...?"

Link shook his head, a placating smile drawing up one corner of his lips.  "No, no.  You were breathing.  You were just sleeping.  You moved a little, but you wouldn't open your eyes.  You wouldn't look at me, or talk to me.  It drove me nuts.  I just wanted you to talk to me, to give me some kind of sign of...I don't know what."  Without looking at Rhett, Link could sense the frown starting to weigh him down.  He waved his hand lightly, cutting off the tension with an easy sigh.  "You were being an ass."

"Plausible." 

An amused silence settled between them as Rhett shifted, sliding over the few inches that separated them until he could prod at Link's knee as an order to mirror him.  They smiled to themselves as they wound up facing each other, cross legged on the concrete. 

Where Link slouched, Rhett straightened, protecting himself from an ache in the morning and dominating the space of the patio at the same time.  But this confident posture asked to be watched, so Link let himself stare into Rhett's face and let himself be stared at in return.  Rhett's gaze was warm, and the longer they looked, the harder it worked to communicate a message that Link wasn't sure he was receiving clearly. 

It felt familiar, this sitting face to face, inches from one another with a perceptible energy ricocheting between them.  Link recognized the confidence in Rhett's eyes, the open adoration blended with a sudden threat and promise to divide him from his senses at the first sign of returned interest.  It slipped under Link's skin and found its way to that darkened corner, dredging up images that he'd started to forget.

He saw himself sitting on Rhett's kitchen counter.

He saw Rhett stepping between his knees.

He couldn't remember how he'd gotten there.  He couldn't remember when it had happened.

He saw his fingers clawing at an immovable doorknob.  He flinched.

"Hey," Rhett said, drawing his attention back to the patio, to the press of one pair of knees against another.  Link shook the daze away. 

"Hey."

Rhett wet his lips before he spoke again, choosing his words carefully.  "Don't know what I was thinking in that dream, but I can promise you that I didn't come all the way over here to ignore you.  I'm paying attention."  His right leg extended, foot wrapping around the side of Link's hip, then sliding under the hem of Link's t-shirt, grazing his waist.

"Are you?"  It was all Link could think to say, his easily-distracted mind now pulled in a new, more inviting direction.

Rhett nodded, sliding his left calf around Link's back, tugging him forward a bit.  At this, Link smirked, sensing the upper hand when it was offered.  He rested his palms on Rhett's knees, glancing once at the patio door before settling his eyes more permanently on the face in front of him.  He let his hands begin to slide forward, drawing them along the length of Rhett's thighs, his fingernails occasionally scratching over dark denim. 

"So what _did_ you come all the way over here for?  What were you hoping to get?" he asked quietly as his hands wandered.

"I guess I just wanted to see you outside of work.  Doesn't a little privacy sound nice?" Rhett replied, visibly holding his breath as he waited for a reply.  Link pretended to think, as if he hadn't known the answer before the question was even asked, then nodded.  Rhett bit his lip.

"And what should we do to accommodate that?" Rhett asked, glancing over his shoulder at the house.

At this, Link felt his stomach flutter, a solution practically glowing in his peripheral vision.  He narrowed his eyes and nodded, pushing out of the embrace of Rhett's legs, feeling rapt eyes watch him as he rose and stretched his back once more.  Rhett sat still, waiting for direction.  Looking down at him, Link felt a light surge of power, and he faltered.  It stung with familiarity, knowing Rhett was looking to him for cues, feeling as if he was both in control of the entire evening and helpless to stop its trajectory at the same time.  It stirred the beasts of confusion and willful ignorance that slept in his mind's darkest corner.  Answers, he thought, might silence them, so he narrowed his eyes and raised his arm, pointing to the red tent standing at the edge of what little grass he had.  When Rhett did not immediately move, Link bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling, then firmly snapped his fingers.

 

 

 

The moment the tent's zipper sealed, Link felt the idea form: the answers that he wanted were hidden in Rhett, encrypted in the scent of him, buried under the artifice that was his clothing, under the fabric pretending to be strong enough to protect the body beneath.  But when Link's hands made contact, they hardly had to work at all; the barriers melted away, separating from Rhett's skin with an urgency matched only by the pace of their breaths.

The last time they'd shared the dark, when they'd scurried through their studio in secrecy, winding up in their loft, wound around each other, Link felt the ground slipping out from under him.  From on his back, Link had been surprised at the weight of Rhett on top of him.  He'd expected it to feel like a homecoming when that beard had slid down his stomach; the shock of unfamiliarity had rendered him speechless. 

It was true that he'd had no memory of using their office for such purposes.  But that, he knew, should not have made the whole encounter feel unprecedented.  Rhett had certainly been confident enough.  And yet even as he was shuddering beneath him, Link had suffered a thrill of something he could only compare to doubt.  It was possible, he'd been telling himself as he replayed the scene a dozen times over in the seven days that had followed, that he had simply fallen out of practice. 

And as with the rest of his recovery, he was determined to get back into shape.  He wanted to reacquaint himself with the process, with his ability to render Rhett breathless, to regain whatever confidence he may have had.

His resolve manifested in bruising kisses planted on Rhett's eager lips, his fingers gripping tight to the back of his neck, stretching to meet him as they both stood on their knees.  The moment Rhett pulled back for breath, Link moved again, pushing him down onto the thinly covered ground.  At first, Rhett chuckled at Link's intensity, letting himself be pressed onto his back, but his laughter quickly caught in his throat, melting into airy whimpers when Link's arms slid up under his bare shoulders, holding him tight as he very nearly devoured his neck.   

"Oh, god," Rhett sighed, voice thick and trapped low in his chest, scouring for more words than it could manage.  The sound of it rattled Link's spine, sending a shiver of encouragement through him, fueling his fervor.  His right hand traveled down the side of Rhett's ribs, halting with the friction of already warm skin.

"You're sweating," Link murmured into Rhett's chest.  His response was a choked whisper, hidden in a guilty laugh.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Link said, surprising himself.  He felt himself smile against a protruding collarbone, realizing that he'd meant it: he liked the feel of Rhett overheating at his touch.  It was invigorating.

He pushed himself up, fully straddling Rhett as he peeled his own shirt off, tossing it carelessly toward what little empty space was left at the corner of the tent.  The second he looked away, Rhett curled upward and wove his arms around Link's back, alternating between dropping wet kisses on his chest and unabashedly breathing him in.  It weakened Link, chipped away at his control, at his pursuit of something that made sense.  He combed his fingers through Rhett's hair and endured the attack, only fighting back once his legs started to tremble beneath him.  He pulled out of Rhett's arms and shoved him backward, hardly suppressing a smirk when he landed hard on his elbows and his eyes blew wide in surprise.  Rhett's head tilted, his face lighting up in a dare for Link to cross an invisible line, to earn a returned use of force that they both knew he could not beat.

Link simply arched a brow at the expression, swinging one leg off of Rhett's lap and resettling it between his thighs, pushing them apart until they framed his hips.  They tested their power, squeezing gently at Link's sides as he leaned forward, resting on palms planted at either side of Rhett's head.  This time, when Link sought a kiss, he let his pelvis roll against Rhett's. 

Their lips grew lazy, intoxicated by more stimulating contact, one deep gasp instigated by a downward grind, the next sigh by an upward thrust.  This back and forth kept on through reciprocal palming, each purring thickly as their fingers wrapped as best they could through fabric.  Their teeth grazed together, tapping out pleas in a language they felt in their bones.  Even as Rhett's fingers burned their prints into his shoulder blades, Link was patient.  He slid like honey over Rhett's skin, breathing deeply and waiting for the bittersweet fade of novelty. 

But the touch was vibrant and its newness persistent. 

Link found himself paving a trail of kisses down Rhett's side, stopping at the band of his dark underwear as his hands slid down mirroring ribs to catch up.  As his cool fingertips dipped beneath the fabric and into the fresh warmth below, Rhett shivered and laughed at himself.  The chuckle did not last long: Link snuffed it out with a firm tug of elastic.  Letting it bunch at his wrists, he let his fingertips stay connected to Rhett as they slid down the full length of his legs, parting only to toss away Rhett's last defense.  In the name of fairness, he carefully maneuvered between bony shins to strip himself to matching bareness, privately thanking Mother Nature for the week's warm front. 

This time, he could not help but groan as he slid back up the miles of Rhett's body, sighing out what little breath he had left when he reached Rhett's lips again. 

In shutting out the world of Link's backyard, they'd given life to their own alternate universe, safely contained by red nylon and mosquito netting.  In it, they were only what they wanted to be, transfixed by the taste of each other, drunk on the sounds of their increasingly ragged breathing.  They were blind there, their universe having no sun, so they refused to let each other move beyond arm's reach.  They interlocked their limbs wherever they could for fear of losing each other to an unreliable gravity.

Rhett's hips twitched when Link's fingernails scraped over the back of his scalp, and Link smiled into a kiss of unexpected desperation.  As his tongue grazed Rhett's, he peeled the hand from his back and slipped it between them, placing it back on Rhett's own body, directing him to touch himself.  Rhett complied, sighing into his own languid strokes as Link pushed up again, quickly cupping a palm to his mouth, then mirroring Rhett's moves on himself.  This was where their rhythm faltered.

Rhett flinched, nearly imperceptibly, but said nothing of it.  They let the tension pass by watching each other work, enraptured by private shows of dim silhouettes, until Link repeated the move, slickening himself again and lowering his hands back to Rhett's sides, pressing forward until he glided easily against Rhett's body.  His hand pushed Rhett's away, working him at the same pace as his increasingly heavy grinds, face flushing at the feel of Rhett's back trying to arch off the ground, trying to bring him closer. 

Link was used to a slow crawl of heat spreading through his muscles in moments like these.  But on this night, as he repeatedly tried and failed to predict the dips and curves of Rhett's body, he felt fires break out all over himself.  The base of his stomach burned, an animal howl telling him to hold Rhett down and take what he wanted, telling him they were old pros at this, that the low groans and halting gasps were all the sign Rhett could give that he was ready.  And yet, through the fog of adrenaline came a pinprick of cool air, wrapping like a single thread around his conscience.  It couldn't hope to hold him back, but it did cause him to press his forehead against Rhett's temple, plant a warm kiss on his cheek, and with a single, rasped breath, say two words.

"You ready?"

And here, Rhett froze.

"What?  Am I what?" he asked, verbally pouring ice down Link's back. 

Link shivered and pulled back, hoping he'd truly gone unheard.  "Are you—" His voice broke off when Rhett raised to his elbows and scrabbled backward an inch.  Link felt his face flush anew, though he was not embarrassed.  He was only trying to understand the resistance. 

"You want to... _you_ want to?" Rhett asked, face clearly working to hide his shock; his dark eyebrows gave him away as they raised and lowered while his eyes widened and narrowed in the dark, trying to find a semblance of normalcy.  Link had to laugh. 

"Mmm...yes?  I mean, I know I didn't take you to dinner, but...I'd still like to... _I'd_ like to," he replied in imitation.  Rhett smiled, but it didn't reach his voice.

"Okay." He exhaled and looked at the floor, shaking something out of his head, then raising his face toward Link's again.  "Okay."

Link sat back, and they both recoiled at the immediate cold.  He talked through it as his brain went into overdrive trying to make sense of the conversation.  "Sound less excited about it, if you could."

"No!" Rhett protested, sitting up so quickly that Link started.  "No, it's not that.  I just...I've never..." His mouth snapped shut when Link's eyes narrowed.  "Here.  Like this.  Out—" he trailed, waving his hand toward the perimeters of the tent.

Link laughed and shook his head.  "Are you serious?  You let us get this far, and then you're suddenly weirded out by being outside?  _You?_ "

Rhett sighed a laugh and dropped onto his back, covering his eyes for a moment.  "No.  I guess...I guess I'm not.  I just...you're going to laugh at me."

Link wanted him to be right.  He wanted to laugh.  He wanted to do anything to stop the new ringing in his ears and bring him back to the edge he'd been teetering on only seconds before.  "Try me.  Please."

"You surprised me," Rhett admitted, finally taking his hands from his eyes and reaching for Link's.  He worked through the rest of his thought slowly.  "I saw it..." he started, pulling his knees together and sending his legs flat against the ground.  "I saw it going," in this pause, he guided Link to sit over him as they'd started.  "...differently."

A fresh wave of adrenaline rolled through Link.  His view was the same, but he felt far less steady on his knees. 

"Oh," was all he could muster.  An upward roll of Rhett's hips made Link's own eyes do the same, as he endured a brazen reciprocation of his own promises.  It re-warmed him, sent his heart racing anew, set the animal pacing again, but it triggered nothing in his memory.  This was an answer in itself. 

"We've never...like this..." he whispered, letting Rhett's fingers interlock with his own to help him balance.  He watched their hands for a moment, then let his gaze drift down to Rhett's face for confirmation.   He'd adjusted to their darkness, and could see more clearly now that looking back at him was loyalty personified, a human embodiment of devotion and trust, a comfort decades old and simultaneously brand new, promising to catch and hold him in this new way as it had in so many ways before. 

He poured himself over Rhett, landing in a fervent kiss that made his words feel redundant.  "Okay.  Of course, yes.  Please."

When Link was lowered onto his back, the nylon cooled the skin that lay where Rhett's had not.  The contrast of warmth and chill felt appropriate, but he had no interest in determining why; he was too focused on the large hands coaxing his knees apart and the breath that ghosted over his thigh as kisses were delivered to his leg through a soft beard. 

"Use your hand," Rhett commanded, voice trapped again in the realm of whispers.  Link did as he was told and took hold of himself, immediately sighing at his own touch.  He closed his eyes more tightly than his fingers, trying to mentally recreate this scene with their roles reversed, trying to remember the expression on Rhett's face when it was his body being pushed to new depths, trying to recall the exact sensation of sinking into him for the first time.  The thought of it had driven his fist to move, distracting him momentarily from the palm covering his hip and the fingers dipping toward his own unexplored spaces.  Some of them squeezed the flesh of his backside; others applied careful pressure, testing for entrance and drawing matching groans from them both upon earning it. 

Link quickly grew grateful for the length of Rhett's arms: they allowed Rhett to sink his fingers as deeply as he pleased while simultaneously savoring the taste of Link's lower lip.  He rolled it between his teeth, rocking himself against Link's thigh, instinctively seeking friction of his own.  The primal roll of his hips sent a violent shudder through Link's bones, making him smile out of their perpetual kiss.  Even through his closed eyes, Link felt Rhett looking at him, so he nodded, exhaling the breath he'd been holding as Rhett momentarily pulled away.

When he returned, Rhett was quieter.  He'd caught his breath, steadied himself and prepared to travel the route he'd charted. 

"You trust me?" he asked, smiling modestly at the sigh that preceded Link's answer.

"I think I trust you more than myself," Link heard himself say, a flood of warmth rushing unchecked through his chest.  It made him dizzy, but he forgot it at the next sound of Rhett's voice.

"Are _you_ ready?" he murmured, taking Link's earlier question and delivering it back to the crook of his neck.

Link nodded, thinking that he was.  He suddenly expected a flash of recognition, the sensation of everything falling into place, the feeling of disbelief at his ability to forget the long story of how they wound up sharing their sweat, using it to slip their bare bodies against one another.  He was ready to remember the moment they'd realized they were hopelessly in love and bound to weave themselves together like this until their full hearts gave out decades down the line.

But as his body locked with Rhett's, as Rhett froze and patiently let him remember on his own that his lungs needed oxygen, as the stars sprang to life and glittered to death before his eyes, Link felt himself release the hold on his confusion.  He mourned his memories and let them go in the same hitched breath, vowing to remake them, starting in exactly this moment.  His eyes slid open and searched Rhett's face for a good place to start.  There were too many to choose from, so he let his gaze go distant and focused on his nerves, noting as much as he could, zeroing in on the sparse hairs of Rhett's legs pressing into his sensitive thighs.  He listened to the shallow exhalations, the sounds of restraint and patience, until his muscles relaxed and his back melted into the ground beneath him.  Rhett moved carefully, a mere inch in one direction and then the other, and Link's eyes rolled back.  His lips curled and eyebrows drew up, and he briefly cursed himself for ever doubting how rewarding this could be. 

As he relearned how to breathe, Rhett began to move more regularly, drawing back and diving forth with no great hurry, relishing in the whimpers that came creeping out of both their mouths.  And then something else came out of Link's.

"Tell me," he said, first too quietly to make out.  When Rhett didn't respond, he said it again.  "Tell me.  Say it."

"What?" Rhett asked, breathing out over Link's temple, clearly distracted by his own consuming pleasure. 

But the non-response did not sit well with Link.  It pulled at him from within, a black hole threatening to disassemble him if he did not hear what he wanted to hear and escape its pull.

"You said you would..." he grunted, voice stronger in its increasing desperation.  "You told me you'd say it as many times as I wanted to hear it, over and over and over."  As he spoke, his hands sought and landed upon the sides of Rhett's face, pulling him back into alignment for a rough kiss.  Link's tongue dove in, seeking out the words for themselves. 

Rhett shuddered and picked up his pace, dripping a bead of sweat down the valleys of Link's collarbones when he finally pulled back to speak.  "You heard that?" he asked, ignoring the furrow of Link's brow in order to finally give him what he wanted.  "You want me to say that I love you?  You want to hear that I can't stop thinking about you?" 

Link couldn't help that he looked devilish when he grinned with such satisfaction, but he did enjoy seeing it mirrored in Rhett's face before he rose to his knees and pulled Link closer by his hips.

"It's all true, Link," he confessed through labored breaths.  "I'm in love with you.  I feel like I've lost my mind.  I can't stop thinking about you.  About your stupid jokes and your awful, wicked texts.  About how you tasted exactly how I thought you would..."

His voice had returned with a vengeance, wiping out what little remained of Link's reason.  All the while, Link absorbed every sensation he could until Rhett's hands dropped to the ground just above his shoulders.  Their angle shifted subtly, and Link found his mouth dropping open, his legs wrapping instinctively around Rhett's waist, body begging for more of all that was pushing him toward a welcome release.

Teeth sank into the curve of his neck, and Link could take no more.  He tried to fight it, remembered that at some point, seconds or minutes or years ago, he'd wanted to be quiet, but the strangled sob that racked him fed some primitive craving, so he kept going back for more, grunting, groaning, forcing every breath through his vocal cords and riding the high they gave him until his knuckles went white as they closed over Rhett's shoulders, his own hips raising to meet Rhett halfway until his body could produce no more sound. 

The quiet did not last.  Rhett found and filled it with the heaviest words he could wield. 

"God, Link.  I love you.  I love you," he swore, breathing the declaration into the air between them, close enough that Link almost saw the words for himself. 

"I love you, Rhett," he answered, lifting to bring their lips together briefly before they both gasped.   

He'd been here plenty of times before, at this precipice of euphoria.  But as Rhett tensed over him, teeth bared as he gave in to his own rush, Link sensed that this payoff would be its own memory, lodged deep in the recesses of his mind, set apart by its novelty, its intensity, and the parties involved.  His jaw was tight but open as his arched off the ground and the chemicals flooded through him, eventually dissolving the tension in his body and leaving him in a slackened, smiling daze. 

 

He opened his eyes and found Rhett lying on his side, head resting on his own bicep as he watched Link. 

"Hmm," Link tried, grinning at his own loss of speech.

"Something like that," Rhett answered.

Link yawned and shifted, rolling onto his stomach, despite the quick grimace that flashed over Rhett's face. 

"They say," he started, resting his cheek on his folded arms, "that you aren't aware of transformative moments as they happen.  That you don't recognize what will stick with you until it's already over.  We only understand our changes in retrospect."

"Okay," Rhett replied, interrupting the lazy monologue, but clearly waiting for its clincher.

"I'm calling bullshit."  Link smiled when Rhett laughed.  "I'm serious," he admitted, turning his face toward the ground to finish his thought, subconsciously hiding from his own sincerity.  "I just get the feeling that I'm not going to be the same after that."

"Uh oh."

"I might never stop thinking about it.  I just can't believe..."

He sighed as Rhett's hand rested on the small of his back and began stroking in wide circles.

"I know," Rhett replied quietly, the whisper of a different emotion tingeing his voice with something Link couldn't place. "I feel it, too."

Link chuckled, suspecting he was being mocked, but hardly caring.  "That you're never going to be same?"

"How could I be?"

 


	24. Honesty

From behind closed eyelids, Rhett could tell the sun was just beginning to rise.  He could recognize the distant orange glow anywhere, even from the comfortable depths of a half-sleep.  His brain moved slowly, crawling through what felt like the beginnings of a hangover, body still worn out from too much of a good thing.  But when the headache and dry mouth never set in, he convinced himself to keep dozing, reluctant to face the day, even when his back was threatening an hours-long ache.  The sounds of early morning traffic mingled with quiet cricket chirps, holding his consciousness in a drifting swing of groggy awareness and happy, thoughtless sleep. 

He shifted, letting his head fall to the side, and hardly flinching when it came in contact with the back of a hand.  Rather than let it pull him from his snooze, he nuzzled the knuckles and let them press into his cheek, very nearly reaching for them with his own hand, but not quite finding the will. 

The fingers pressing into his face were not accommodating.  They were restless, flexing and curling, trying to settle against the touch and failing.  The motion pierced his fog, quickly becoming the focus of what little attention he could spare.  With every twitch, he was drawn closer to the waking world, until he grew frustrated enough to roll onto his side and interlock those fingers with his own. 

It took a single minute of lazily stroking bony joints with his thumb for him to recognize that this hand did not feel as small in his own.  He knew who it belonged to, so for a few blissful seconds, he did not mind.

And then he did.

"Shit," he heard himself say as he flew upward, raking through his wild hair with the hand he'd just torn loose.  "Shit!"

Link flinched and instinctively pushed backward, away from the source of sudden negative energy.  His eyes cracked cautiously.  "What?" he groaned, coming to life at the sight of Rhett's eyes darting around the tent. 

"It's morning," Rhett whispered harshly. 

Link reached for his glasses from the corner of the tent and rubbed his eyes before sliding them on.  "The nights have been ending that way lately."

"It's morning and I'm still here. In _your_ back yard."

Rhett could feel his heart beating in his chest, trying to feed his limbs the blood they needed to make his escape.  When he looked back down at Link's face, though, his jaw slackened in surprise.  Link had always been susceptible to panic in moments like these.  But rather than helping Rhett find his shirt or open the tent, he was simply sprawled on his side, smiling to himself.

Rhett shook his head in disbelief.  "Okay.  Your lack of empathy is showing."

"I'm empathetic.  Sympathetic, even.  Or wait...which is worse?" he asked through a second yawn.

Rhett scrambled for his shirt from where his head had lain.  "What?  They're not bad things to be."

"You know what I mean."

Rhett rolled his eyes and slid toward the tent's flap.  "I'm leaving," he announced, before cursing to himself when the zipper jammed.  "Are you kidding? Shit, shit..."

"Hey, big man.  Chill out," Link cooed behind him, shuffling closer. 

Rhett's knuckles had just turned white with the force he was applying to the metal zipper when they were brushed away by fingers that were, in a strange reversal of roles, much steadier than his own. 

"You can't force it," Link said directly into his ear, biceps pressing against Rhett's ribs as he slowly straightened the alignment of the zipper and unfastened it with ease. 

"Thanks," Rhett grunted, trying to lunge for the exit and grunting when the arms that had woven beneath his own closed around his stomach and pulled him backward. His protest was caught in the back of his throat, trapped there when his mouth was covered over by Link's lips.  He wanted to be irritated, but he was too impressed with how quickly Link snaked around him, how easily he had thrown him off course, even if only for a second.  Rhett's anxiety looked the other way for a single minute as he indulged in a final languid kiss, memorizing the flavor that the night had left on Link.  In the end, it was Link who pulled away first, separating himself from Rhett with a heavy sigh and a nudge to the back. 

"Okay," he groaned, lying back down in his place as Rhett got to his feet.  "You can go."

As he pushed himself from the tent, Rhett couldn't help but grin.

But the smile fell the closer his car carried him to his house.  The streets were quiet, mocking him with their openness, making his car the center of attention as it sped through sleeping neighborhoods and not-yet-opened businesses. He'd checked his phone three times before he'd even reached his own neighborhood, but hardly trusted its lack of messages. 

In his intense focus on the streets before him, he'd not noticed how thin his breath had become.  But once safely arrived in his own driveway, Rhett killed the engine and gasped at the same time, a fresh rush of adrenaline trying to usher him toward his own front door.  He resisted the urge to race to his bedroom for a moment just brief enough to consider restarting his car and driving it as far down the nearest interstate as a single tank of gas could take him, tearing his rearview mirror from the windshield and leaving it broken on his own front lawn.  The image would have frightened him if he'd started to really consider it, but for that, he did not give himself time.

After unlocking the front door, Rhett pocketed his keys, doing all he could to keep his entrance quiet.  The process included closing the door with a turned knob and carefully applied counter-pressure before slipping through the living room and finding his way to his bedroom.  As he approached a half-opened door, he cursed himself for not remembering how he'd left it the night before.  But all this focus on the door was just a distraction from what he hoped was not waiting on its other side.  He had to face it, so he swallowed hard and pushed the white wood with just his fingertips, shoulders sinking with his racing heart at the sight of Jessie lying on her back staring blankly at the ceiling above their bed.

"Hey," he wanted to say, though his voice backed out and only announced the first consonant.  A light sheen had broken out across his forehead, but the room felt remarkably cold, made more so by the silence it housed.  He stared at her, watching her chest rise and fall for several cycles before he found the nerve to speak again. 

"Do you want to talk?" he asked, trying again to crack the stifling silence. 

She laughed once, the sound of it sucking the air from his lungs.  He waited, the picture of contrition as he quietly closed the door behind him.  Finally, she spoke, her own voice a raspy snarl directed at the ceiling fan.

"Did you shower before you left?"

The question caught him off guard, so he had no choice but to answer honestly.  "No."

She nodded to herself before speaking again.  "You should now," she replied before finally meeting his gaze.  "I don't want to know how I smell mixed with him."

His brow knitted, stomach noticeably lurching as his thoughts turned to wordless white noise.  There was nothing to say; he had no response, no argument in his defense that could convince her to lower the verbal weapon she had aimed right at his throat.  And since his brain was crackling between his ears, he thought he misheard her when she next spoke.

"What?" he coughed.

"I said I'm going to go make some coffee, and I'm going to sit with you.  Go."

He was still trying to process the answer even as hot water had plastered his hair to his forehead.  His skin had begun to redden in the spray, and he idly wondered if the angry streaks were evidence of actual burns.  He endured it for three more long breaths before adding some cool water to the mix and reaching for the soap. 

"That was fucked up," Jessie said as a means of announcing herself.  He froze, listening for further reprimand.  When all he heard was the sound of the door latching, he answered quietly.

"Yeah."

"But not entirely surprising, I guess."

With this he did not agree.  He'd spent the whole drive home wondering how he could still be so impulsive at his age.  She continued.

"I don't know how I could _not_ feel inadequate after that, though.  How I could possibly convince myself that I am enough.  I know," she began, taking a moment to steady her voice with a deep breath, "I know that maybe my whole heart wasn't in it last night.  I was still a little upset, and I was still distant.  But I mean, I _was_ there.  I still _wanted_...I still wanted you.  I wasn't just enduring it."

Her words drug his mind back to the last time he'd been in this shower, when she'd played along with him, let him bathe her.  He wanted to speak, but had nothing to say.

"So for you to just get up in the middle of the night, or whenever it was...for you to not just leave, but to go to someone else...I want the fact that you love him to make a difference.  I want to be willing to make this exception for him, because it's _him_ , and not just anyone.  I want all of your history together to comfort me, to remind me that he's been there all along, and you still chose me."

In the silence that followed, he heard a sniffle that pierced his chest. 

"I don't want to hurt you," she said, voice trembling and surprisingly small for the words that it carried.  "But none of that matters.  I don't know if I'll ever be able to watch you go to him without feeling like you're walking away from me.  And if I keep trying, I'm afraid that I'm going to get bitter, that I'm going to resent him and you both, and I don't want to be that person.  I don't want to destroy this life we have because I agreed to something I wasn't ready for."

Though he knew she couldn't see it, he nodded, opening eyes he hadn't known he'd closed and half expecting to find his heart lying on the floor of the shower. 

"I'm sorry," she said, breaking the silence again.

"You don't have to be sorry.  You have nothing to be sorry for."

She responded by simply clearing her throat and whispering, "Okay," before slipping out of the bathroom and latching the door behind her. 

Once he was alone, a distant part of Rhett's mind had to commend him on his ability to stay standing, for an ache bone deep and years old had risen in his body, inescapable and breathtaking as the blue eyes he'd left watching his back less than an hour before.

 

 

The day passed as a blur, Jessie disappearing to take their sons out to a practice, a lunch, and a shopping trip, giving Rhett the house to himself.  He was restless in it, ricocheting from one room to the next, finding stacks of books to organize, lamps to dust, and benign distractions in between.  He leaned for half an hour over the kitchen counter, eating bland crackers and staring at nothing through the window over the sink.  He couldn't bring his eyes to focus, so he let them fall where they wanted as the mind behind them careened from one prediction to the next about how he would behave upon seeing Link again.  None of them saw him in control of his emotions, as in one scenario, he took Link into his arms and squeezed him until he was gasping for air, and in another, he said nothing at all and let himself burn from the inside out.  And in these moments through the day, he told himself that it did not matter, that he still had a day and a half to figure it out.  But as it tends to do, the universe imposed itself on his momentary peace and he found himself standing alone in his dining room, the sun sinking outside his windows and leaving him little light by which to stare down at a message sent from Christy's phone that simply read, "Call ASAP."

 

 

* * *

 

"You're all smiles this morning," Christy said, wrapping her arms around Link's stomach from behind and planting a single light kiss at the collar of his t-shirt.  She watched his hands as they rinsed the breakfast dishes and stacked them above the dishwasher.  "You get some work done last night?"

"What?"

She sighed and rested her cheekbone against his shoulder.  "Come on.  I sleep in that bed, too.  I know you got up.  What did you do?"

"Got me."

"You're supposed to be resting.  You know that."

"I know.  It was a relaxing work.  Mindless and energizing.  I haven't taken any steps backward.  Not that I know of.  I think."

"Don't do it again," she warned.  Her grip tightened into a single squeeze before she released him and padded off toward the hallway, shooting a warning scowl toward his laptop as it lay closed on the dining room table. 

The threat proved effective: Link spent his entire Saturday away from his computer, choosing instead to plan a spring camping trip with his sons and take an impromptu trip to the movies in the early afternoon.  Christy stayed near him, feeding off his energy as he embraced every proposition made to him during the day.  He seemed in no mood to tell his kids 'no,' which found them settling into reclining theatre seats with their own boxes of candy by 2:00. 

As the previews started and the lights went down, Christy placed her hand palm-up on the armrest between them.  The intensity with which he took it into his own caught her off guard, pulling her focus off of the screen in front of them, away from the happy-go-lucky cloud upon which they'd spent their morning floating, and resettling it on his face.  It was directed at the screen, but his eyes were watching too closely, paying too much attention, and giving him away to the woman who knew him best. 

She squeezed his hand and leaned in, whispering, "You okay?"

He glanced at her, feigning confusion, and nodded, squeezing back.  "I'm fine.  Are you?"

Her eyes narrowed at the quip, and she turned back toward the screen, opting to mind her own business.  And she did so for long enough to catch him with his guard down, well into the film's rising action.  She spared half a second to glance at him and found him staring at the lowest edge of the screen, clearly considering something well beyond their theatre.  But she was patient, and let herself find him in similar states three more times until her curiosity turned to anxiety and drove her to speak. 

They were lying on the couch after an early dinner, legs intertwined beneath a merino blanket.  Their kids had abandoned them for more interesting pursuits in their own rooms, and the living room was quiet, the sound of a wood wick candle crackling in the air.  Link had been focused on his tablet, reading bits and pieces of articles, following his flitting interests around the internet while Christy read the same book on meditation she'd been chipping at for two months.  At a welcome chapter break, she looked down her legs and found Link staring off into the ceiling, tablet hanging precariously in his fingers. 

Without thinking, she nudged him with her foot, digging it gently into his ribs.  He flinched and lowered his face to look at her.

"What?"  His voice indicated that he'd hardly realized he was staring.

"You've been doing that all day."

He breathed a thoughtless laugh and shook his head.  "Got the stares.  Maybe I'm more tired than I thought."

"That all?" she tested, consciously keeping her small sense of doubt off of her face.  When he did not answer immediately, her evenness took considerably more effort.

He finally sighed and scrunched his nose.  "I don't know."

"What don't you know?" she asked, almost glad for a reason to set down her book.  She pushed herself up to see him better, leaning her head against the cushy backrest as he did the same.

"It's...I feel weird talking about it.  I mean, with you."

Her neck stiffened.  "What?  Why?" 

He shook his head again.  "That's just it.  I don't know.  It just seems..." he trailed, sighing in frustration at his own halting speech.  She reached for his knee and squeezed it, prompting him to look her in the face.  With his eyes captured, she offered a crooked smile and rubbed his leg. 

"It's okay.  You can tell me anything."  Then, after a heavy pause, she added, "Even if it's about Rhett.  I can take it."

"How'd you guess?"

It was a good question, and she had to shrug.  "I guess it's just the fact that you're so hesitant to talk about it.  I don't know.  I think I just figured it out as I was talking," she replied, laughing at herself and silently thanking God for lightening the mood.  Link ran a hand through his hair and winced, having accidentally touched what was left of the bruise on his temporal ridge. 

"I think this...this hesitance itself is part of it, part of what's got me..." He fluttered his hand in front of his face to indicate his own internal shakiness.  "I _want_ to talk to you about Rhett, about this feeling, or this thought, or whatever it is that I'm having.  And I feel so sure that I can do that, that I _can_ talk to you, that it'd be perfectly normal to do it.  But..." 

She swallowed, waiting for his eyes to focus again and trying not to hold her breath.

"But I can't remember ever doing it before."

"Oh.  Well, that makes sense," she said, rolling some tension from her shoulders. 

"It does?"

"I mean...yes?  Sure it does."

"Because I hit my head."

"Well," she sighed, letting a realization start to settle over her, and cutting off the rest of her intended response, replacing it with "Yes.  Of course."

"So, I keep giving myself the same explanation for...this other thing.  But I just can't make it make sense."

"I don't know that these kinds of injuries really play by any rules, but alright.  What can't you make sense of?"

He pulled his knees in, leaving them uncovered in favor of keeping them close to his body, protecting him as he inhaled deeply and closed his eyes, letting fly the words that had been weighing him down.

"I can't remember Rhett before the accident."

" _What?_ " she balked, jerking her head from the cushion.  His eyes went wide and he raised his hands to wipe the words out of the air.

"No, no.  That's not what I meant.  No, I remember him.  Of course I do," he corrected, laughing at the mix up.  "No, no, no.  I remember him.  I remember him, and I remember...I remember loving him," he said cautiously, watching her face for any indication that he should stop.  She smiled softly and nodded for him to continue.  "But I don't remember making the leap from what we _were_ to what we _are_.  I just...I remember him telling me he loved me, and that's it.  I don't remember a date, or ever even telling you that...any of it.  I don't remember being with him out in the world, if that makes sense.  I just have these feelings, like this is how it is, how it was.  But I can't even remember our first kiss."  When she didn't speak, he caught his breath and went on.  "And I can't understand why, when I've recovered just about _everything_ else, I wouldn't be able to put that back together.  When I'm with him, I can convince myself that it doesn't matter, that I can just enjoy what we have now without having to remember our history, but...and this is why I feel so weird talking to you about this: it breaks my heart a little.  I mean, he's got those memories, and I have just...I have nothing."

She flashed a smile to jerk her mouth out of the straight line it had formed.  "Have you said anything to him about this?"

"I don't want to hurt him.  I mean, it would probably feel pretty rough to hear that all of that stuff was just...wiped out.  He could really be devastated."

"Oh, you might be surprised."

He frowned at the response, but let it percolate, eventually letting his eyes brighten with hope.  "You think so?"

"He's Rhett.  I can't see him _not_ understanding where you're coming from.  He _has_ to."

"What about you?  Are you okay with...I mean, that's weird to listen to."

"I'm fine, baby," she said, surprising herself with how convincingly the words came out.  "When it comes to all that, all you have to do to keep me happy is to make yourself happy.  And you will feel much better if you tell him.  I swear you will.  You shouldn't have to feel like you're _hiding_ something from him.  He would want honesty."

"That makes sense."

"It does.  It does make sense.  Too much sense, almost."  If asked when she last blinked, she could not have answered. 

He pulled a face and smiled at her, shifting his weight and crawling up her legs to bring their faces together. 

"How do you do it?" he asked, drawing too close for her to focus on his features. 

"Do what?" she asked in return.

"Make me feel so much better in so little time."

"I'm your One True—I'm...I'm your wife.  I've been studying for years."

"I'm lucky for it."

She smiled.  "Yes you are." 

He kissed her twice, once on her smiling lips and once on her forehead, before returning to his end of the sofa, where he spent the next hour happily tapping around his tablet again, too engrossed to notice her pick up her phone from the end table behind her head and draft no fewer than five threatening, expletive-filled messages to Rhett before erasing them all and settling with something simple: "Call ASAP."

 


	25. Reality

As he and Jessie stepped into the Neals' foyer the following Saturday, the first thing Rhett noticed was the glint of light off of too many bright teeth.  Everyone was smiling broadly, greeting each other with abnormal warmth, a rush of hugs and touches to shoulders that seemed out of character for people who saw each other so often.  But he went with it all, embracing Link quickly before turning to Christy and letting her arms wrap with dangerous strength around his ribs, an immediate and unnecessary reminder that he was not in her house to enjoy himself.

"Something smells amazing," Jessie said, handing a bottle of wine over to Link.  Christy took the cue and turned toward the kitchen, waving an arm toward the dining room.

"It's just about done.  Go on and sit," she called behind her before disappearing.  Jessie did as she was told, leaving Rhett and Link behind at the front door.

They shifted their weight simultaneously, suspended in a tension so distracting that Rhett did not notice Link's search for firmer footing.  He glanced in the mirror behind Link and exhaled a laugh, rolling his shoulders back and hoping he'd find confidence in a straighter spine.

After a strangely silent beat, Link nodded toward the dining room and Rhett nearly jumped at the chance for a change of scenery.

They found places at the long table, and Christy appeared with a glass dish in one hand and a corkscrew in the other.  She handed the latter to Link, who set to work on Jessie's gift.  Rhett just watched, privately thanking God for his wife, who sparked up a conversation about Christy's plans to redecorate.  This led into talk of a mutual friend, a gym they'd visited once, a too-enthusiastic personal trainer, and a colorful spiral of topics that required little input from their spouses.  They sustained the conversation for a majority of the meal, allowing Link to make predictable jokes about their choice of topic under his breath to Rhett, who smiled too quickly at them.  But for the flares of anxiety he suffered each time Christy met his gaze, the dinner felt comfortable, a welcome step back into well-worn territory where everyone played familiar roles and felt at home in the light chatter.  His second glass of wine helped him to cling to the feeling, relax into the warmth and start to consider the possibility that this was not an evening on which he would break Link's heart.  By the time he pushed away a cleaned plate and tossed his napkin onto the pile at the center of the table, he'd convinced himself that everything was going to be fine.

"You know what?  I'm dying for some gelato," Christy announced, laughing when Jessie responded with an enthusiastic nod.  "I should have gotten some today, and I didn't think of it."

"I can—" Link started to offer, having temporarily forgotten his doctor's orders.  Even on this, the last day of his driving restriction, he seemed to know nobody would let him go, so he snapped his mouth shut and sat back, face comically emotionless.  Christy laughed and pushed herself up.

"That's okay, babe.  We still haven't tried that new place that opened last summer.  Let's make a run real quick," she told Jessie, who did not need to be asked twice.  She was already on her way to the door when Rhett recognized what was happening and sprung from his chair.

"We can all go together," he suggested too loudly.  Link laughed at him.

"No, no," Christy replied, stopping the doorway to the kitchen to turn and look at him.  "You just hang out.  We'll be back."

"You sure?" Rhett asked, immediately cursing himself for sounding so desperate.  Her head angled almost imperceptibly, and she did not blink.

"Mmhmm."

She bent to kiss Link's forehead and turned toward the garage, leaving the house and taking much of Rhett's confidence with her.

"Let's start a fire," Link said, bringing Rhett's attention back into the room.  He stared at Link as his brain scrambled for the right response.

He settled with, "Okay."

Within minutes, he was outside, arranging logs in a small fire pit as Link pulled up four chairs, setting them first in pairs, then pushing them apart into four equal corners and dropping small flannel blankets in their seats.  He dropped into one, wrapping a red plaid blanket around his shoulders as he watched Rhett work.

"I think I know why Christy was so eager to get out of the house," he said quietly.  Rhett tried not to flinch, almost swearing when the fire started too easily and he had to sit down to face Link without distraction.

"Okay," he replied as evenly as possible, pushing his chair closer to Link's before sitting down, forcing himself to be still.

"I think she wanted to give us the chance to talk."

Rhett blinked several times before he spoke.

"Yeah.  It seems that way..."

Link pulled his blanket tighter to himself and chewed his lip before nodding and continuing on.  "So, okay.  Yeah.  I have something I have to tell you."

"I do, too," Rhett spit out before his fear could stop him.  Link's eyebrows rose in surprise; Rhett's lowered in confusion.  For a moment, he'd thought Link was on to him.  Confronted with the reality that this was not the case, his brain raced to figure out what could be on Link's mind, an ever-futile pursuit.

"Wait, you do?" Rhett asked, swallowing hard when Link frowned and nodded gravely.

"Should I go first?"

He wanted to protest, to suddenly cut off the possibility of further delay.  Rhett didn't understand the glint of sadness in Link's eyes, but it made the words in his throat burn like acid, and he found himself dying to spill them, to let the truth out so it would stop dissolving him from within.

And yet.

"Yes.  You go first," Rhett said.

Link sniffed and nodded, gathering his resolve.

"I don't want you to be hurt by this.  And I've been telling myself that you'll understand it, because...I mean, you've just understood everything," Link started, pausing for a deep breath and finally meeting Rhett's gaze.  "So much has come back to me.  I feel...I feel almost normal.  I remember just about everything but the fall itself.  I can remember leaving for the trip, and I can remember parts of the cabin, and I can remember the weirdest little bits and pieces of...us."

"Yeah," Rhett muttered, filling the space that Link left hanging.

"But it just...I just have these impressions, if that makes any sense.  I can remember these pieces of feelings, like they must have been attached to something great, to these moments in our past.  In our past," he emphasized, shaking his head when he thought he wasn't making sense.  His eyes broke away and turned to the fire, and Rhett was grateful for it; Link couldn't see him blinking away the threat of tears.

"What I mean is that...I can't remember being together, together before the accident.  I can't put together any solid memories of us having this between us.  And I've been trying to justify it, to explain it to myself, how everything can feel so new and so familiar at the same time, and I just...It breaks my heart that I can't remember," he said, voice fracturing into a whisper.  Rhett cursed his own involuntary sniffle, for it drew Link's attention, and when he looked into Rhett's face, he sat up, leaned forward and smiled the saddest smile Rhett had ever seen.

"But I'm here, and I want to rebuild it.  I can accept that those memories are gone if you'll let me remake them.  It's not a reflection of how I feel, I swear.  It's just this shitty consequence of...of being an idiot," he said, trying for a sheepish laugh.  Rhett shook his head, but Link continued.

"I mean it.  I want hear—"

"Stop."  Rhett frowned at the severity of his own voice.

"Please don't think—"                                                       

"Link, you have to stop," he interrupted again, closing his eyes and digging the heels of his hands into them.  "You have to let me talk now."

He heard Link sit back in his chair and sigh, bracing himself.  "Okay."

It was Rhett's turn to lean forward and stare into the fire, though its flames were obscured by the hot tears welling in his eyes.  They were destined for this moment, so he let them come, only wiping them away when they touched his cheek.

"I love you, Link."

"I know.  I love you, too," Link answered, nodding in his peripheral vision.  Rhett matched his nod, willing himself to be satisfied with the possibility that this was the last time he'd hear those words.

"The fact that you don't remember any of this...it's not because of the accident."

Link smiled at what he thought was an attempt to comfort him, but said nothing.

"It really isn't.  This, as it is now...before the accident, this didn't exist.  You don't remember it because there's nothing to remember."

Link leaned forward, but could not make Rhett look at him.  "That doesn't make sense."

Rhett snorted a helpless laugh.  "Tell me about it.  While you were out, and I just had to wait for you...I spent all that time in that room with you, and I was by myself.  Those days when we were just alone together, and I was just dying for you to wake up...I just wanted to hear you make some stupid joke, or hit on a nurse, or something," he laughed shakily, so Link did, too.  "That's when I realized that I couldn't even think of living without you.  That's when I put it together, what I felt about you.  That's when I realized how in love with you I was, I am.  The first time I ever told you...you weren't even awake."

Rhett fell back in his chair, exhausted and not yet having spoken his hardest words.  Though he was slowly shaking his head in denial, Link did not have time to speak before Rhett began again.

"So, when you woke up, you were a little different.  You felt differently about me than you had before.  And I didn't know, I still don't know where that came from.  But I didn't have the heart to tell you the truth.  I didn't want that truth.  I wanted what you were offering.  I was afraid that if I corrected you, that you'd feel different.  You'd remember how we were, and you wouldn't want me anymore.  Or, you know.  Want this."

"So..." Link started, eyes blinking rapidly as his brain went into overdrive.

"It was selfish.  I was insanely selfish."

"You're telling me..."

"You're not missing anything.  You didn't lose any memories."

Link's lips parted as if to speak, but his face froze before anything came out.  When Rhett finally dared to look at him, the softness had left his eyes and they stared coldly over the fire, into the falling darkness beyond.

Link's mind was working so hard that it left his body behind, rigid and nearly void of expression save for the subtle narrowing of his eyes.

While Rhett fidgeted in his seat, picking at his fingernails and pulling a blanket around his shoulders, Link processed his words.  He'd heard each one before, but in this configuration, they required much more thought to make any kind of sense.

He tried to reconcile them with all that he'd only just confessed, and found that he couldn't make the two realities fit.  There were still parts of him that recognized the feel of Rhett's lips on his own, that knew how their bodies fit and felt together from the comfort of a bed, of a couch, of a limousine.

"How?" he finally asked, croaking the word through a closed throat.  He looked to Rhett and saw an ache too real to doubt.  "How do I still feel like this has history?"

"I don't know, Link.  I don't know.  Maybe...maybe you could hear me, you know?  Or maybe you were having some kind of dream.  I don't know."

The suggestion raised the hair on the back of Link's neck, and he crossed his arms, taking a moment to ignore his body's messages.  He searched the backs of his eyelids for answers, willing his goosebumps to disappear.  The sound of Rhett's quiet sniffle startled him into meeting an equally bleary gaze.  The permission to consider that his hazy memories may have been fiction did not ease them out of his mind for good, as he would have expected.  Instead, as he looked into Rhett's pained face, they came rushing back with a force that knocked the air from his chest.

He blinked against the onslaught, the striking images of struggling with a locked doorknob, of Rhett lying on the foot of his own bed as Link tried to sleep, of sharing their first kiss on Link's couch, of dancing in his kitchen, of running away from a wedding and into a hotel together, of Rhett shoving him from the edge of the mountain, of Rhett pulling him from the ocean, saving his life in dozens of ways.  Their intensity paralyzed him. Now that he could see them all in such detail, feel the bittersweet swells of emotion, he wanted them back.  He refused to accept that they were all inventions, but did not know how to voice such a fear.

"Link..." Rhett's voice was gentle, a soft pull back into the moment.  "You...okay?"

Link sighed in disbelief as he shook his head.  "It can't be possible."

A question was on Rhett's face, but he did not ask it.  Instead, he took a deep breath of his own and sat forward, facing Link fully, ready for whatever he might need to say.

"I remember.  Just like that, Rhett.  I remember everything.  And none of it is..."

"Well, maybe not.  Maybe some of it is real, right?  You can tell me, if you want," Rhett offered, speaking quickly, making every effort to keep Link from standing up, from walking inside, from exiting this situation completely.

"You'll lie," Link said, instinctively reaching for the joke without realizing how sharp it would feel.  His brow furrowed at the dead air that followed, but he did not take it back.

Rhett nodded.  "I deserved that.  But I won't.  I will tell you the truth.  Whatever you want to know, I will tell you."

Link shivered.  "I don't want to be out here anymore."

"Okay," Rhett replied, instantly standing and reaching for the fire pit's metal cover.  As he dropped it over the low flames to snuff them out, he asked, "Where do you want to go?"

"I just...I want to lie down."

"Let's go," Rhett said, extending his hand.  Link pushed himself up without taking it, and headed for the door.

 

* * *

  
"I'm not even angry.  I'm not surprised, and I'm not mad.  I just feel...a little numb, and a little sad.  And I don't even know what that means," Jessie said, wiping a thick tear from the corner of her eye.  At her left, Christy leaned over the steering wheel, resting her forehead on the backs of her hands.

"I know.  I get it.  But that makes only one of us.  I was mad.  No, you know, 'mad' isn't nearly strong enough—"

"Oh, no.   _That_ pisses me off," Jessie agreed, before confirming for the third time what Christy had told her only minutes before.  "Rhett never said a word?"

"No.  Or if he did, he didn't go far enough to make Link understand."

"You're defending him."

Christy sighed.  "Well, it's what I want to be true.  I want to think they had this conversation and that maybe Link just rejected it, or couldn't remember it, or something.  But...he remembers everything now.  He just doesn't lose things like that."

 Jessie rubbed her eyes and ran her hands down the sides of her face, trying to ground herself in a reality she would have liked to reject herself.

"I can't believe it.  It's one thing for him to not talk to me, but for Rhett to keep this from Link...I can't believe that!" Jessie cried, face openly exasperated as she hissed a strained laugh.  "But also, somehow, I can.  Because I feel like I've lost my grip on everything.  He's stopped talking about it, so I don't know...but you know, I don't really want to know.  But I also don't think..." she trailed, shaking her head as the thought died on her tongue.

Christy lifted her head just enough to nod, then rested it again.  With one woman visibly reeling and the other forfeiting her energy, the vehicle was the image of defeat as it idled in the parking lot of a closed gelato shop.

"I hate that I told you," Christy said into her arms, shaking her head as soon as the words were out.  "No, I hate that I _had_ to tell you.  I hate that this has gotten so twisted up that I don't know what I'm supposed to say to who and...I won't live like this.  We've never had secrets like this before."

"Are you kidding?  What if you hadn't told me?  I'd just be this clueless little mess, wondering why her husband won't talk to her about...God, who knows?  How the hell is this _supposed_ to go?  How is this supposed to ever feel right, even if we do talk about it?"

The car was quiet, the radio murmuring commercials too quietly to make out.  Jessie's hands fell to rest on her lap, palms upturned as if they held her question before her, a dangerous, volatile thing now that it had been spoken into life.  Christy sighed and sat up, staring out the windshield as she shook her head and delivered an answer that both stung and reassured Jessie.

"It isn't."

They did not look at each other, but chose instead to let the idea settle around them.  Neither was surprised by its arrival, though they each considered it privately for a long while, staring out into an empty parking lot as they found their ways to the same conclusion.  When they finally turned to look at each other, they could only laugh at their teary eyes and nod.

 

* * *

 

The house was quiet when they entered from the garage, and as they passed through the dining room, Christy and Jessie dropped their purses on the table still littered with dishes.

"Surprise, surprise," Jessie muttered, glancing at the mess their husbands had left.  Christy laughed through her nose and shook her head, grateful for their ability to still find humor.  It seemed the only thing keeping her from imploding.

Jessie poked her head into the kitchen and returned with a shrug.  "Did they leave?" She'd whispered, but didn't know why.

Christy's eyes fell as she listened to the house, and when she caught the murmur of low voices, she shook her head.  She turned toward the hallway and took a deep breath.

Before she could start her walk, Jessie's hand interlocked with her own, a symbiotic source of strength.

They crossed the length of the hallway, stopping just outside the master bedroom's door to listen for a natural break in conversation.  But what they heard in their eavesdropping slipped beneath their show of strength and ate away at the resolve they shared.

With a soft, unsteady voice, Link was sharing his dreams, and through apologetic whispers, Rhett denied their roots in reality.  

From the safety of Link's bed, they were disassembling their relationship.

"There was this picture...it was from that big house party in college," Link started, seemingly waiting for Rhett's acknowledgment before he went on. "It reminded me...well, it reminded me of you.  It was the first time we kissed.  We had to, but we wanted to.  And then we didn't really know what to do about it, so...we just let it go."

Christy's brow furrowed as Link's voice picked up, building in excitement.

"You do remember.  I can see it on your face, man.  Don't deny this one."  He'd phrased his plea as a command, and it caused Christy to lean against the wall, heart breaking in anticipation of what Rhett might say.

"Link...I talked to you about that party when you were in the hospital.  It was one of the first things I said to you.  I was...I was so afraid of talking to you.  I was so afraid that I would say the wrong thing or that...that it was no use.  That I'd already said my last—" Rhett's voice broke off, and Christy felt Jessie shift behind her.  She was lowering to her knees, fingers still holding tight to Christy's, bringing her down, too.  They sat fully on the floor, heads resting against the wall as they listened, lumps rising in their throats.

"That was just me," Rhett finally spoke again.  "I must have put that thought in your head.  That's...that's incredible."

"It feels less than," Link answered.

"No, you're right.  It's...the whole thing is bad."

"What else did you say to me?" Link asked.  Rhett's response only came after a long, thoughtful pause and a deep breath.

"I told you...I told you about some music.  I played some music."

"You know what I mean."

Rhett sighed.  "I told you what I'd realized while you were out.  That I...that I loved you, was in love with you.  And that I felt like a coward for only being able to see it once you were unconscious.  And only saying it when you couldn't respond."

It hardly mattered that Christy did not know exactly what drew it forth; when she heard the sound of Link's breathless sob, her head fell to Jessie's shoulder, and as small arms wrapped around her, she let out a quiet sob of her own.  There, in the floor of the hallway, the pair felt frozen, newly frightened of making themselves heard and disrupting an already destructive atmosphere.  She let Jessie's hand stroke her back and gritted her teeth against the helplessness, resisting the urge to jump up and run to Link, to break this agonizing spell before it had played itself out.

"Link..." Rhett tried.

"I just keep having this...you can't begin to understand how stupid I feel."

"No, Link.  Don't.  You didn't do anything wrong—"

"I know that," he shot back, voice shaky and severe at the same time.  "But you knew the whole time.  Everyone knew."

"No, they didn't," Rhett said quietly.  He was met with a bitter laugh.

"Oh, good.  You lied to them, too."

"Now, hang on.  It's not like there were all these opportunities to sit you down and—"

"You could have found the time to tell me that I was wrong.  God, that's...this is why you were so weird when we went out that night.  This was the big secret.  Everyone knew but me, and you used it against me."

"Against you?" Rhett scoffed.  "You didn't seem to mind.  You were happy to be where we were!  That why I was so hesitant to say any of this..."

"I was making a false assumption!  You took advantage of that."

Rhett's voice grew stronger as he tried to mount his defense.  It was his verbal scrambling that made Jessie bury her face in Christy's hair, as she saw it for what it was: his last ditch effort to regain the control he'd lost.

"I did, but I did it because I loved you, Link.  Because I didn't know how else we could have ever gotten to where we suddenly were!"

"Where we were was a lie.  You were making things worse for me."

Christy buried her face deeper against Jessie's shoulder as she heard Link move, leaving the bed and crossing the room to process his thoughts with as much of his body as possible.  When he did not continue, Rhett rejected the idea.

"No, I can't accept that—"

"It doesn't matter whether you accept it, Rhett.  Do you know how...do you know how insane I've felt, trying to piece this whole thing together?  I felt like I'd lost all this time, like I'd...I mean, I just told you how I felt.  It was eating me up that I couldn't remember!  And Jesus, I told...I told Christy about it.  I made her listen to all this bullshit because...but you already know that.  Everyone fucking knows that."

"Link, calm down."

The room went dangerously quiet for a heavy second, until Link sighed. "I am calm.  I'm just also a little angry and confused and even with all these answers, I can't understand..."

"What?" Rhett tried, aiming for softness and warmth with his tone.  "Just tell me what's not making sense, and I'll fill it in.  We can put it all together."

"I don't understand...how we could do this to each other."

"Because as wrong as it was, it felt right.  I mean, didn't it?  All of it?" When Link did not answer, Rhett exhaled a meek, hopeful laugh.  "And I really think it can again.  I think, if we're just honest from here on out, it can all be right again.  It can be what it was just a few hours ago, and so, so much better.  I mean, don't you think so?"

Christy and Jessie had righted themselves on the floor again, heads against the wall and eyes closed as they held their breath for an answer, neither knowing exactly what she wanted to hear, and still caught off guard when it came, delivered by a voice worn down to a whisper and yet firm with conviction.

"No."

 


	26. Normalcy

"You're not eating."  
Rhett stared at the television, eyes caught unblinking and unfocused for the third time in an hour. When a foot nudged his hip, he flinched out of the spell, head turning slowly as he looked at Jessie.  
She narrowed her eyes from the opposite end of the sofa.  
"You've been holding that bowl in your lap for half an hour," she said, glancing at the untouched popcorn resting on his thighs, "and I know you didn't have breakfast. Only two bowls in the sink."  
"I used Locke's."  
"Oh," she replied, eyes widening as they rolled, hardly buying his lie. What she had not seen in the process was Rhett's phone resting on the end table to his right, a light still blinking to signal a message that had arrived hours before: _Just called S. I have to take more time off. I should not have gone back so early._ It had frozen Rhett, grinding his brain to a halt and causing him to ignore the faces around him, as bright and loving as they were. Still, Jessie didn't have the heart to press the issue, so the pair fell silent again, each slowly finding their way back to distraction, pretending to re-settle their attention on the screen.  
The interaction set the tone for the remainder of the day though, as Rhett became aware of Jessie's gaze, her tendency to watch him for some indication of emotion, some sign that he was ready to talk about the night before. But the idea never seemed appealing. He saw no reward to rehashing the moments surrounding the single word that Link had uttered to shatter their new and fragile bond, and he certainly had no interest in speaking aloud the message he'd received that morning. He wanted to be angry, to feel victimized, to blame Link's closed-mindedness for what was now a failure, but every time he started to voice his roiled feelings, inconvenient empathy set in, and he found himself seeing the mess through Link's eyes. His thoughts moved in rough, disjointed circles, too easily evading the right words to name them. So for this day, he stopped searching for words at all. The silence made the afternoon move more easily, as he could passively partake in his family's affairs from his place on the couch, only relocating once dinner had been served. There, in the soft bustle of the dining room, the sun setting out the picture window, he finally ate, though he couldn't taste a thing.  
When a soft chime stirred him awake the next morning, Rhett was surprised at how deeply he had slept. He had fallen asleep on his left side and woke up in the same place. This, paired with the inactivity of the day before, had caused his body to stiffen, and he had to crawl out of bed and onto the floor. The house had gone on without him, smaller bodies scurrying around and preparing for long days of their own while he let his legs rock gently, stretching out his back as he stared up into the ceiling. Even his dog was gone, having abandoned him for her breakfast.  
As he pulled his knees into his ribs and rolled slowly to the side, his eyes turned to the space beneath the dresser. One of Jessie's earrings had long fallen behind the furniture, fated to spend its days hidden and unmatched. He could have easily slid across the wood floor and retrieved it, but he didn't. He just let it anchor his eyes while his brain drifted in and out of lazy metaphors inspired by the jewelry.  
He couldn't have said how long he'd been on the floor when a throat cleared in the doorway.  
Rhett flinched and pushed onto his stomach, preparing to rise, but succumbing to the comically pitiful position of lying face-down on his floor.  
"Oh, no," Jessie whispered, playing along with the act. She approached the body at the bedside and knelt, quickly checking his neck for a pulse. "I hate to be the one to tell you this," she sighed, dropping to sit cross-legged beside him, "but you're still alive."  
"Shit."  
"I know. I'm sorry." After a long exhale, she ran her fingers through her hair and tilted her head. "So, what are you going to do with yourself? Or is this the plan for today?"  
He grunted a non-response, and she nodded to herself.  
"I can't decide if it's an improvement over yesterday. You are less in the way like this..."  
"Why are you being nice to me?" he finally asked, closing his eyes as he waited for her answer. It was preceded with a sad chuckle.  
"What good is there in being angry anymore? I literally can't take you down any further. Link wins that round, too."  
When his brow knitted, she sighed and put her hand on his shoulder blade, stroking up and down the length of his back.  
"That isn't true," he eventually said, his voice low and timid. "You could. You absolutely could."  
"Well, I guess so. Is that what has you so paralyzed? That I could throw up my hands and walk away from this mess?"  
"I couldn't blame you."  
"Is that what you'd do?"  
Rhett shrugged out of the question, dodging the prospect of giving her any ideas. But then he felt his shoulders relax at the sound of the smile in her voice.  
"Then I guess I really am the bigger man," she said, swinging her legs to the side so that she could lie down next to him, face up. "It never crossed my mind. Not seriously. Can't help who you love. Or something like that."  
"That wraps it all up with a nice little bow, doesn't it?"  
She laughed to herself. "It's easy to say that shit once it's all over."  
He hummed sadly, pushing onto his side to look at her. "It is, isn't it? It's all over."  
Her eyes fixed on the ceiling, she frowned. "Don't be dramatic. I heard you two Saturday night, though. Something has ended; something goes on. It's never all over. I mean," she turned to look into his eyes as she finished her thought, "you're still alive."  
"God, I wish you hadn't heard it," he sighed, cheeks still threatening to flush at the memory, at knowing that she'd been sitting just outside the door when Link had brought down the axe on their romantic bond. She'd felt their footsteps through the floor as Rhett had launched himself from the bed to grab Link's shoulders and been shoved away, warned with a single icy word not to use his hands to hold them together. Without them, though, he'd had nothing. Language alone could not convey all that he needed Link to know, and as Link paced the length of the room, adjusting to his new reality, Rhett had found himself whispering pleas, begging for forgiveness without knowing what he'd do with it.  
"It was ugly," Jessie conceded, just as the memory of Link's bitter dismissal had started to resurface. "But it was real. And we needed real. Everyone did."  
"We did."  
"So, now we have it."  
Rhett watched the side of her face and let himself be warmed by the faint lines at the edges of her lips, etchings of smiles that weren't always so sad. "Tell me something real, then, Mrs. McLaughlin."  
Her eyebrows rose at the request, and she slid closer to him, their arms intertwining. "What do you want to know?"  
"It wasn't ever going to work, was it? Even if we'd done it honestly, let it come about without the accident. If we hadn't had to rush into it so...so violently."  
She chewed her lip in thought, then came to her conclusion. "I never thought I'd have to make that decision, to give you permission to share yourself, your heart like that. I admit that I wasn't ready to do it as quickly as I did. But to say never," she trailed mercifully.  
"It'll be easier if you do, Jessie."  
Her head fell to the side and they locked eyes, serious and strong in their conviction to see this conversation through. "Then, no. It'd never have worked. I can just about count on one hand the people who love Link more than I do. I'd do anything for him. But I don't know that I'd ever be able to just hand over the one part of you I ever got all to myself. I know it's selfish, and I know—"  
"No. Don't apologize," he interrupted, interlocking their fingers at his hip. "Not ever. Not for feeling like that. If you're not at ease with it, then that's all the confirmation I need. You've never led me astray. If you don't like it, then it's not meant to be. Because what I've never questioned, in all of this confusion, is that I belong with you. You're what made any of it seem possible. I knew that if I had you, it'd be okay. But I took you for granted."  
"Spouses do."  
"But shouldn't."  
"No, they shouldn't. You know better now," she said, smiling. "You learned in a...in a weird way. Maybe I did, too. Still," she sighed, tone suddenly brighter, more hopeful, “it’s nothing we can’t fix in months of therapy.”  
They laughed and he squeezed her fingers, smiling a genuine smile as he shook his head and said, “I’m already there. I’ll call today.”  
As her head tilted to lean against his shoulder, he lifted her hand to kiss the back of it, leaving it pressed to his lips as he drew a long breath. She filled the silence that followed.  
"It will only take time. You were both upset when we left. You've calmed down; I'm sure he has, too."  
"I just want to talk to him."  
"What would you say?"  
He shook his head, at a loss. This was a good question.  
"Then maybe it's for the best that you take the space he's given you. He'll let you know when he's ready to see you. He can't help himself," she chuckled, rubbing his bicep. "You'll be back in each other's good graces in no time, and we can all move on, stronger and wiser for it."  
Rhett nodded, knowing his face read anything but passive acceptance. She pulled away and sat up anyway.  
"The question stands, then."  
"Hmm?"  
"What are you going to do with yourself?"  
His hands lifted to his eyes, rubbing them hard as she groaned in frustration.  
"Oh, stop it," she said as she rocked to her feet, heading for the door. "You could stand a shower. Maybe start there and see where the day takes you."

With the steam of a hot shower rising around him, Rhett could feel the vice loosening from his chest. He felt more open and mobile since his time on the floor, and a soft thread of hope had started weaving itself through him. His hand reached for the knob and even hotter water sprayed from the stainless showerhead, nearly scalding him as he tried to let it rinse away mental remnants of Link's hands on his skin, fingers gripping his bare waist, lips kissing his ribs for the first and last time. Any other day, the penance would have seemed silly, but he served it willingly on this morning, selfishly hoping it would fortify him for the rest of his sentence, however long Link would deem it necessary.  
By the time he'd dressed and made his way into his quiet kitchen, Rhett had figured he could get used to passing his days in near isolation. He'd so recently had a powerful taste of such solitude that he knew he could drop back into a routine of going about his work more or less alone; only this time, he would be productive, writing and taking calls and continuing to chip away at the supposedly-promising unknown of the future. It was the same plan he'd been acting on in all the half-days that Link had been in the office: he wanted to impress him with how much he could do by himself. It would feel different, of course, knowing that it was Link's choice to be absent, but they couldn't avoid each other forever. The inevitability of their reunion would carry Rhett through, allow him each day to shower and dress, eat and drive to the studio, plant himself in front of his computer and start to chisel. His dedication to their company, the creative promise they'd made to themselves and each other could have fueled his productivity for days or even weeks of solitary work.  
It could have.  
If he'd let it.

 

* * *

 He'd wanted to growl, to exhale some language of frustration that only wild beasts would truly understand, but as Link pulled his comforter up around his shoulders, all his throat would give him was a childish whine. He'd spent over twenty-four hours napping and sulking, pacing his house and the sidewalks beyond, letting the last remaining shards of Rhett's truth settle into place around him, pricking and poking him, keeping him from ever truly getting comfortable, which was a shame, since it was a Sunday.  
But since he'd done so little with his body, by the time Monday morning arrived, it was just not tired anymore. As much as he wanted to, he couldn't hide in his sleep. There would be no burying himself in his bed and shutting out the world until it stopped spinning so fast.  
Instead, there was quiet and consciousness. His eyes locked open and stared at the back of his hand resting on the pillow in front of his face, counting the hairs on his wrist until they started to ache from such close focus. In a single petulant swing, he threw the covers back and exposed his chest to the open air, rolling onto his stomach for a moment as he inched toward the edge of the bed. He paused, though, as his gaze landed on his bedside table and the single small picture frame it held. He reached for it and pulled it to him, turning to his back and resting it on his chest so he could examine it comfortably.  
The photo was bright, filled with sunlight bouncing off of white sand, bright swimsuits, and grinning faces, and the more he looked at it, noticing the freckles that had risen on Christy's cheeks and the sand peppering his own shoulders, the more he felt himself starting to smile.  
"Reminiscing?"  
His concentration was broken by the soft voice coming from the doorway. Christy walked into the room with a mug of coffee in one hand and a bowl of berries in the other.  
"I guess I am," he mumbled, watching her place the mug on her table and sit down on the bed. She extended the bowl to him and he took a raspberry.  
"I love this picture," he said quietly, brain just starting to catch up to his mouth. "I kept...when I was dreaming, you know, during..."  
"Mmhmm," she hummed, easing him through the sentence.  
"It kept coming up. I kept feeling like I was looking for it. It was weird."  
"The picture?"  
"Yeah."  
"That is kind of weird," she agreed, smiling down at him. "Did you ever find it?"  
He nodded before setting it back on the nightstand. "Yeah."  
The answer was followed by a full silence, but Christy was having none of the mystery. When she sighed, he could tell she'd grown tired of so many thoughts going unspoken. So he spoke. "I didn't really get what I was looking at when I did, but Rhett somehow...I don't know. He handed it to me, and I just understood. 'Family.'"  
"You're saying you dreamed that Rhett helped you understand what your family meant? That's nice of him," she eventually replied. He chuckled at how the idea contrasted with the past weeks' worth of his own behavior.  
"Guess he didn't want me in the dark, after all."  
"No one's ever wanted you in the dark."  
"You're quick to forgive him," Link sighed, sitting up when she reached for the coffee mug and handed it over. It warmed his palms as they wrapped around its sides.  
"You're assuming that I have? I'm not over it. I'm not just going, 'Oh well,' and moving on."  
Link chewed his lip in a play at fear. "Oh."  
"I'm too good at grudges to let it all go yet. But if it's really done now, then I can start to try.”  
"I wouldn't know how."  
She sighed through her nose and smiled to herself. "You're doing it right now. I can see your wheels turning. You don't want to be mad at him. You're not good at it."  
"No, I'm mad. It was deceitful."  
"It was."  
"It was...he lied to me. He kept me from..." As his words trailed, she rubbed his knee through the blankets.  
"I know. He wasn't quite honest with me, either. And that made me have to...not lie to you, but certainly not just lay out the truth...It was a rough place to be, and I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to say any of it without destroying something in the process."  
"We should never have put you in that position. I'm sorry, Christy." He'd again spoken without thought, just letting the knot of emotion unwind through his mouth, and he felt a weight lift from his chest when she smiled and squeezed his knee once more.  
"What I've come to understand—I realized this as I was making that coffee, for some reason—is that as messy and awful as it was sometimes, at the bottom of it all was just a bunch of love, more than any of us knew what to do with. That's not such a bad thing. We had this scare, this loss of a great source of that love, and now that we have you back, we're all settling into loving each other in the right ways again."  
"You're saying 'love' a lot."  
She laughed and nodded. "Make you uncomfortable?"  
He grinned sheepishly and shook his head, lowering his gaze into his coffee as she went on.  
"Yeah. For someone as angry as I am, as I have been, I have a surprising amount of it in my life. You do, too. Lucky."  
"So. Forgiveness?" he eventually asked, looking to her for guidance on dragging himself out of his anger. When she simply shrugged, his head fell back against the headboard in exasperation.  
"I got nothin', babe. Time will tell you what to do. Won't be easy, and doesn't have to be today, but you're just going to have to trust that once you get back in the same room with him, you'll know what to say."  
"Fine," he sighed, rolling his eyes for dramatic flair and feeling himself brighten at the sound of her laugh. "Then it's not going to be today. I just want a day off from all this. I just want to be here," he started to explain, turning to set down the mug before stretching across the bed, wrapping an arm around her waist and drawing her into him. "I just want to enjoy my loving anger and my lovely, angry wife, in my loving, angry house."  
She let him squeeze her ribs for only a moment before slipping out of his arms and standing up again. "Well, I really came back in here to say goodbye. Your angry wife has things to do while the kids are on campus today, so you're on your own for a while."  
Soon after, he caught the faint sound of the garage door closing and released a deep sigh toward the ceiling.

The morning air was crisp, but Link had left his jacket at home, knowing how quickly the temperature was bound to rise once the sun was fully shining over his neighborhood. He'd crossed at least two blocks of houses, but he thought that he could still hear Jade's barks of betrayal ringing out, sounding the alarm that she'd been left alone. Closing the door on her hadn't felt good, but he'd learned long ago that she was not the best partner for what he'd set out to do.  
He knew himself too well to think that he'd ever be a long-distance runner. The closest he'd ever come were the seasons spent on soccer fields and the training that had gone into them, but even then, all the running had had a purpose, a tangible goal in sight and in mind. To run freely, without a specific destination or reason for doing so, just did not suit him. But on this Monday morning, left to his own devices and vibrating with potential energy, he could think of nothing more attractive. Two months had passed since he'd visited his trainer or even seen the inside of the gym. His rehab sessions were the closest he'd come to a real workout, and while his therapists had not given explicit permission to return to his own routine, they hadn't withheld it either.  
So he found himself several blocks away from his house, snapping cardio-friendly earbuds over the shells of his ears and rolling his shoulders. He faced homeward, trying to be as smart as he could about his endeavor by thinking if it all went wrong, at least he would have less distance to limp or crawl back home. And with a single deep breath and three bounces on the balls of his feet, he took off.  
He paced himself at a gentle jog, fingertips gripping the edges of his long sleeves and pulling them over his palms as he went. For the first fifty yards, his ankles and knees popped and protested to the use and impact, but when he didn't stop, they settled into their repetitions and moved him forward easily. Of course, his lungs started burning not long after, but he took slow and measured breaths to keep any cramps at bay. Upon crossing his second street, he felt his jaw relax and his shoulders drop, and he smiled, loving and hating that he was starting to enjoy himself. What he hadn't noticed, at least not consciously, was that his mind had gone quiet, focused too intently on keeping his body in motion to worry about what waited for him when his limbs grew still again. He knew, of course, that there was an uncomfortable conversation that he'd need to have, that there were still rough edges to smooth out with work, with their unorganized and unpredictable filming schedule, with his own contributions to the functionality of their company and creation of their signature product. He knew that he would have to return soon, to sit in front of the camera and directly next to Rhett. And he knew that making their way back to any semblance of their previous atmosphere would require looking into Rhett's eyes and not actively recalling all that they'd experienced together so recently. Nothing could work right if he couldn't make himself forget the sensation of Rhett's lips on his own, the warmth of long, strong arms encircling him, or the traces of heat and sweat transferred from skin to bare skin. For the routine to return, it would all have to go. This, of course, did not trouble him as he ran, picking up his pace for the last block leading to his house. None of it crossed his quiet mind as sweat began to drip down the back of his neck and his stomach grew tight with exertion. As his feet pounded the concrete, it was all miles away.  
And then his house came into view, and it was all right there, sitting patiently on his front step, wrapped up in a gray jacket.

For a split second, Link considered just running right by his own house, pretending he didn't see Rhett waiting for his return. But he quickly figured that doing so would only tire him out further and make him vulnerable to a bad mood when he returned and Rhett was inevitably still there. So he slowed to a walk and approached coolly, as if he wasn't gasping for air.  
"You're running? Are you...that's good," Rhett said quietly, having caught himself about to question Link's judgment. Link stayed several feet from the porch and paced the stone path leading to the driveway. He reminded himself in this quiet moment that he'd been given permission to be angry, that such an emotion was, in fact, allowed. But as he stole a couple glances at Rhett's uneasy face, he struggled to dredge up the same sense of betrayal that had burned in him only thirty-six hours before.  
"You didn't get my message?" he asked evenly, breath returning to normal.  
Rhett's eyes dropped to his shoes as he nodded, hand quickly wrapping around the back of his own neck. "I got it."  
"You didn't respond, so..."  
"Yeah. That's on me. I didn't know what to say."  
From inside, a fresh round of high-pitched barks rang out, and Rhett nodded toward the door.  
"She's been at it for a few minutes. I've really got her worked up."  
"She was already mad. Then you show up and don't let her out."  
"Nor did she let me in."  
"Smart dog," he said as he made his way to the front door, pulling the single key from his pocket and unlocking it, then holding it open for Rhett to enter. As Rhett brushed by without eye contact, Link added, "Smarter than me."  
They stood in the foyer as they had two nights before, and Link bristled at the memory. Rhett had been quiet and stiff, and he'd had no idea why. He could feel himself falling backward into the whirlpool of fury and confusion, so to escape it, he simply left the space, feeling immediately more grounded when he set foot in his own living room. Rhett followed cautiously, waiting for some kind of direction. When he didn't receive it, he simply mirrored Link, sitting at the farthest edge of his sectional, putting as much distance between them as he could while still sharing a single piece of furniture.  
"I know you didn't want to see me," he finally said, grateful for the distraction of Jade jumping onto the couch and resting her head on his thigh. He scratched behind her ears for a long minute before going on. "I can totally understand that. I get that you'd want—need—time to...I don't know, figure out what you want to..."  
"Yeah," Link said, cutting off the thought as it struggled for purchase. "And yet."  
"And yet here I am. I know. I'm being impatient and invasive and...probably not helping. But Link," he sighed, finally looking up and meeting Link's eyes, swallowing hard at what he saw there. He'd expected anger, or at least irritation. And while the gaze was not altogether warm, it was also not unkind. It was open, willing to listen, and perhaps even willing to navigate these newly murky waters. "I can't stand the idea of being away from you again, not knowing how this is going to go. I did it for a week and I nearly lost my mind."  
"Well," Link drawled, not sure what the rest of his response should be. He shook his head in forfeit of his conversational turn.  
Rhett steeled himself with a deep breath before his next confession. "I know I messed up. I see how I took advantage of this whole screwed up situation. I get it, how I made it worse for you, how I didn't do the one thing that I was supposed to do: help you out. I wasn't there for you like you needed me to be. And you have every right to be pissed about that. You should be."  
"I'm hearing that a lot lately."  
Rhett gave a small smile, not fully understanding the response but appreciating its indication of Link's engagement with his own words.  
"But I want to be there now. If you'll let me, I want us to figure out what the hell happened. I want to understand it, to put it into some kind of context. But I can't do it alone. It happened to both of us. And we've always done everything together. I want to do this together, too."  
Link ran a hand through his hair. "That's a strange request. You want to examine how we accidentally and intentionally lied to each other...together. You want to analyze the lifespan of this...whatever this was that happened, together."  
"I don't need to analyze it. I don't need to pull it all apart. I just want to come to some kind of understanding, so we can walk away from it all on the same page. I need to know what you're thinking. I don't want to be left on the outside again."  
Link nearly said, "You've always been on the inside," but held back, biting his tongue in favor of maintaining the forward motion of the conversation. "Okay," he said, nodding and reaching for a throw to wrap around his shoulders. "Let's put it into context."  
Rhett gave a small smile at the permission, hopeful that they could mend their rift. Before he could start the work, Link jumped up from the couch.  
"You want some coffee? Er—tea? I don't have good tea. Water?"  
Rhett chuckled at the offer. "Okay. Water's fine."  
Link dropped his blanket and took off for the kitchen, leaving Rhett to sit alone in the living room. He couldn't help but grin at Link's obvious stalling, but he said nothing, allowing the time to creep by and bring Link back in when it pleased. To earn Link's presence back in the studio, to have the chance to sit in the car quietly together on the way in, to hear his laughter bouncing off their office walls again by the end of the week, Rhett was willing to wait. He realized that he had started leaning forward, resting elbows on knees, so he forced himself to sit back into the couch and be partially enveloped by the plush cushions.  
"You know we're going to just have to be brutally honest with each other, right?"  
Link's voice startled him, forcing Rhett to acknowledge just how comfortable he'd become by himself in the quiet living room. A glass of ice water was set on the coffee table in front of him, and he eyed it as he nodded, watching Link curl back into the far corner of the couch in his peripheral vision.  
"Sure. Yes. I'm hoping for a moratorium on the anger. Temporary ban on getting mad at each other."  
"Open forum. No judgment."  
Rhett raised an eyebrow at Link's suggestion. It was exactly what he'd hoped for himself, but it seemed unlikely that Link would be able to adhere to it for long. Link sensed the doubt.  
"Starting right after I call you an ass for insinuating I have no control over my emotions."  
"Deal."  
"Ass. Done."  
Rhett smiled and picked up his water glass, suddenly tentative in the face of guaranteed honesty. Link set his own coffee mug on the side table and wrapped his arm around a bent knee.  
"So, did you want to ask questions, or...?" he prompted, watching Rhett's face for some official beginning to the conversation. It came as a nod, its follow-up distant and spoken quietly.  
"Do you think we can ever be normal again?" Rhett cleared his throat as soon as he asked it, the words having seemingly settled in his mouth a long time ago. When Link didn't immediately answer, he added, "Does it seem possible to go back to being who we were before the accident?" Before he could keep tacking on to his question, Link rescued him with an answer.  
"Well, no, we'll never be who we were. But that's always the case, right? You never wake up the same person you were the day before. Experience changes you. And now we have this...experience...in our history. But," he paused, shrugging as he thought through the rest of his answer. "I think maybe that can be okay. I think we can go back to being productive, to making good things happen as a team. I think we can still work together."  
"And...but..." Rhett started, trying to avoid sounding pathetic as he reached for the rest of Link's thoughts. Eventually, he gave up and simply asked, "Are we going to be friends?"  
"I think part of what had me so angry at you—at us—is that I don't know how not to be friends. In my worst moment, I wanted to walk away from everything. I was hurt and mad and felt so stupid that I just wanted to drop everything and never look at you again." When Rhett lowered his eyes to look at his own hands, Link dipped his head, trying to meet them again. "But that didn't last long. I don't really know what my life looks like without you in it. There's all this good stuff on one side," he explained, raising his left hand palm-up and looking at it as he described it: "My family and friends and my home life and travel, all that. But then there's this other half," he countered, raising his right palm, fingers curling around the void, "that just feels like a hole without you. There's too much history, too much of my life is tied up in you to just be able to walk away. But what actually matters," he added, dropping his hands and wrapping them around his knee again, "is that I like it that way. I don't want to be able to walk away." In the same breath, his face twisted with embarrassment and he added, "That sounded pitiful. Gross."  
Rhett laughed once and shook his head, grateful for the lightening of the mood. "No, no. No judgment. Not pitiful."  
"Well, I'm done answering that question anyway, before I embarrass myself any more."  
"Fair enough. You should know I pretty well share the sentiment, though. I prefer having you entwined with such a massive part of my life. I wouldn't want to be able to leave it all behind so easily, either," Rhett replied before taking a long drink to steel himself for his next prompt: "Is there anything you want to ask me?"  
Link furrowed his brow and pulled his bottom lip between his teeth as he thought. He regretted that the whole conversation was a surprise, as he hadn't had a chance to articulate the dozens of feelings and questions flying through his head. So, rather than seek out another weighty subject, he landed on a topic that he knew would make them both squirm.  
"Do you think I'm a good kisser?"  
Rhett's jaw dropped for a split second before he laughed and shook his head. "You can't ask that! We're trying to get out of—"  
"Brutal honesty, Rhett. Moratorium on getting mad. I can ask what I want," Link could hardly finish his sentence before laughing at the shade of red washing over Rhett's face. But Rhett came swinging out from under his embarrassment.  
"Do you need me to answer that? Are you so insecure that you need this boost?"  
"So you're saying it'd be a boost. That's a yes," Link confirmed, crossing his arms and nodding, relishing how much he'd altered the mood of the room, waiting for some kind of retribution. There was a safety to the conversation. What should have been awkward was simply an active agreement that their romantic experience was in the past. As they gave themselves permission to talk and laugh about it in this moment, they grew more comfortable with leaving it behind. So when the question turned back on Link, he was ready with an answer.  
"I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. And I enjoyed feeling like the smaller party for a change."  
Rhett cocked his head with widened eyes. "Really?"  
"It's a novel experience. You'll probably never know."  
"No, probably not. Your turn," he said, nodding toward Link again as they fell into a comfortable back-and-forth, old, familiar smiles settling in around their eyes.  
"What was your favorite hangout?"  
"Is that a safe way of saying 'date'?"  
Link scrunched his nose. "No, not really. They weren't dates every time we hung out. Or, if you thought they were, then you're a disappointing dater."  
"Ah," Rhett replied, looking up toward the ceiling to consider his response and finding himself in a mild disbelief that he even had options from which to choose. Finally, he answered, "The studio roof. The whole night was fun, but that's...you were just so determined to have a good time. And we did. You made me dance with you."  
Link laughed softly and nodded, glancing to his left, over the back of the couch and toward the kitchen so quickly that his own brain didn't even register the motion.  
"What was that?" Rhett asked, catching him off guard. "I saw that."  
"What?"  
"That little...you just frowned. Full honesty. What was that little look?"  
Link crossed his arms and pulled them tight, fingers digging into the backs of his elbows as he closed his eyes and carefully detached real, lived memories from those invented in his overactive brain.  
"I dreamt," he said slowly, opening his eyes and sensing from the subtle shift in Rhett's expression that they must be glistening, "that we danced together in there. It's one of the first not-real things I can remember. Dancing with you in my kitchen."  
"Oh. Wow."  
"Yeah."  
"Alright," Rhett said evenly, easily letting it go without further question. Link was grateful for his willingness to move on, so much so that he practically leaned forward into Rhett's next question: "So why did it happen?"  
Link chuckled and shook his head before reaching for his coffee. "Okay," he sighed, both glad to have heard the question finally voiced and already exhausted with trying to answer it.  
"I mean, that's all I really want to know. That's what's going to help us move on, get back to normal, I think," Rhett said. When Link simply smirked, he crossed his arms and jutted out his chin in defiance. "What?" he asked, as if what he was asking them to do was nothing out of the ordinary.  
"You make it sound so clinical," Link answered, voice surprisingly quiet. "Like there has to be some corrupted root to all of this. Like if we can just find it and dig it out, we'll be okay. It kind of..." he trailed, shaking the thought out of his head. But Rhett was persistent; he should have known.  
"It kind of what? What's wrong with going about it like this? At least we'll know."  
When Link parted and pursed his lips several times, cutting himself off before ever truly answering, Rhett huffed and pushed himself from his seat. He crossed the unspoken boundary of the sofa's corner and dropped onto the cushion right next to Link, resting his right arm along the back of the couch and facing him fully.  
"Honesty. 'It kind of' what?"  
"It kind of kills the magic." Link met Rhett's gaze and held it, daring him to object to the sentiment.  
Rhett gave a closed-mouth smile and drew a deep breath, working hard to keep his face even as a storm threatened to erupt in his chest. He swallowed hard and looked down, only opening his mouth to speak once certain his voice would not break.  
"It's already dead. That particular...magic. We ran it into the ground." He raised his eyes to Link's face and was startled that he was still being watched. "But the magic that we've always had, that power to make people—and each other—laugh, the ability to bring the wildest, most ridiculous ideas to life...all of that is still alive and well."  
Link nodded, though Rhett could not tell if he was buying it. So he continued.  
"I think...if we just come to some mutual understanding of how we ended up going down that road...it's going to help us to better appreciate the road we're meant to be on together. That's all."  
"Okay," Link responded, almost cutting him off. He took another sip of coffee and exhaled through his nose, thinking carefully about the conversation he'd had with Christy just that morning. "Here's what I think happened," he began, fingertips tapping the mug rapidly before he went on, "I think we got scared. All of us. I can only speak for myself, but I think I came so close to...it seemed possible that I might not make it, at least in my head, in my," one hand shot up to draw a circle at his temple, "in my temporarily-broken brain. Maybe I dreamt so little about anyone else, Christy, the kids, because I tell them all the time that I love them. I don't always do a good job of it, but I try to let them know every day how much they mean to me. So if I had to leave them, maybe I was confident that they knew they were the world to me.  
"Maybe all my unfinished business was with you...because as much time as we spend together, as much as we're always doing together, I may have felt, or still feel, that I take you for granted. It's not like us to be sincere, I know," he said, nearly dismissing his train of thought. Rhett's eyes narrowed in thought, though, and something about the look encouraged him to continue. "But I must have felt like I needed to tell you that I loved you. And somehow, my head turned it into the wrong kind of love."  
Rhett nodded and spoke quickly as he replied. "Yeah. I believe it. That makes sense. That's why you woke up...how you did," he said, halfway laughing at the memory. His smile faltered as he realized it was his turn to explain himself. "I agree with the fear, though, and maybe even for the same reason. You didn't know what was going on, but I did. And every day you didn't wake up was like one day closer to confirming we'd never see you again." The lump he'd been fighting rose in his throat and turned his voice to gravel, but he was more concerned about his eyes filling with tears. He rolled them, embarrassed that he was the one to lose his composure, but when he glanced at Link, Link just shrugged it off, permitting the emotion and thinking no less of Rhett for his inability to stifle it. When Rhett pulled himself out of his nosedive, he ran a hand through his hair and nodded at something unspoken.  
"So when you woke up, we'd both been in this state of fear, trying to grapple with the idea of it all being over. And I think we just went into survival mode. We'd been so afraid of losing each other that when you came back, we just let ourselves do things that we normally wouldn't, 'cause we were so glad to be together. It's like...it's like we were two sides of a rubber band being pulled apart. When the tension was finally let go, we just..." his hands finished the thought for him, first pulling apart, then miming crashing together and an explosion that followed.  
Link smiled at the gesture before he added, "Maybe that's just how it had to be. If you hadn't gone along with my confusion, I may have just...it may have been too much for me."  
"Yeah, I mean, ultimately, I was doing you a favor by feeding into your delusion," Rhett agreed with a tone so serious that neither could keep from laughing. But neither corrected the notion, either.  
"You let me have this crutch of affection, this sensation that of course you knew how much you meant to me because...look at us," Link suggested. Rhett nodded along, letting this idea find its place within the picture they were painting.  
"But now that you're here, you're back and healthy, and hell, you're running now," Rhett said, "we don't have to pretend anymore. You don't need the crutch to ease back into reality, and I don't feel the need to hold onto you so tightly. Because I know...I know you're going to be here tomorrow. You're not going anywhere."  
"Right."  
"Right. And we don't have to worry about being tempted to go there again. It won't be necessary. It was such a specific set of circumstances that I just don't see that kind of need arising again. Beyond getting us through a fear of death, it didn't really mean anything, you know?"  
Link swallowed. "Right."  
"Yeah," Rhett confirmed, starting to smile again, despite the dull knot in his stomach. "So there it is, then. Context. We know why it happened, and we know that it's over. And we know how lucky we are that we can move on."  
"Very lucky."  
Rhett sighed and rolled his shoulders, turning to face forward on the sofa, hands resting on his thighs. "That feels good, right? Answers. Context."  
"Yeah," Link agreed, unblinking eyes watching the side of Rhett's face. "It's good to have some answers."  
"Can you put your cup down?"  
Link had to process the words for a second, they'd come out of Rhett's mouth so quickly. When they finally made sense, he twisted and set the mug down once again. When his torso straightened, he'd turned right into Rhett's arms, and as he looked out toward his dining room over Rhett's shoulder, he felt the ache in Rhett's chest transfer to his own, creeping up his throat and causing it to tighten. The contact was overwhelming, a heartfelt greeting between old friends seeing each other for the first time in ages and a whimpered goodbye between dying lovers holding smoking guns. He fought down a sob so hard that he shuddered, and Rhett pulled him closer, their chests pressing fully together, hearts pounding as they tried to speak all the words that their tongues always got wrong. Hidden deep in the complementary rhythms were apologies and promises, blending and twisting around each other in ways that their brains could not quite translate. It didn't matter; the messages were not meant for minds.  
But with time, as Rhett's fingers stretched around Link's back, pulling him impossibly tighter, the urge to cry packed up all its symptoms and left their bodies. In this unspoken agreement that this is how things were, in this agreed-upon story and Rhett's precious context, there was stable ground, and their feet touched down. They pulled apart and wiped their faces, replacing twisted mouths with sheepishly smiling ones, heavily exhaling the last remnants of a past they would no longer address.  
The atmosphere grew lighter, and they found themselves breathing more deeply. Rhett stayed for another hour, easing himself back into his old demeanor, eventually stretching across half of Link's couch as they carefully maneuvered the conversation to a seemingly endless series of work-related topics. But they laughed through their plans, letting every wild idea live in the realm of the hypothetical, writing nothing down. Their jokes hung in the air overhead, dancing cautiously around the thin threads of something still uneasy, careful not to strike any true nerves.  
By the time Rhett was walking out the front door, they had agreed that Link would still take a few days off, rest a while longer before returning to full days at the studio, picking up a break-neck filming schedule to make up for some of his lost time. Rhett had tried to talk him out of the venture, but Link quickly realized that he was craving the work, dying to throw himself headlong into more projects than he should be able to manage. It was their style, to overload their plates and lean on each other as they tried to balance them. It was normal, and normal was what they needed.

The rest of February did not go by easily, for those full schedules came upon them quickly, and Rhett and Link both realized they had to relearn how to spend their days at distances both comfortably close and equally safe, sharing familiar spaces without slipping back into their new habits. So, as each treaded delicately around the other, the days passed slowly. But they did pass. And eventually, they turned to weeks comprised by fresh and exhilarating career moves that left less and less room for carefully-considered office arrangements and quiet, delicate carpool schedules. Once safely in the midst of a chaotic production schedule, Link found himself climbing down from a catnap in the office loft without once losing control of his thoughts; he could cover himself with his recliner's fur blanket without once remembering how it felt against his bare back as Rhett pressed him into the floor. And in time, Rhett found he could do the same. With time, he could doze off sitting up on a sofa without ever recalling Link's weight on his lap or the warmth of Link's thighs as they framed his own. On the rare occasions that the images did slip out of their shadows, they weakened with each appearance, grew smaller and fainter, packing less of a punch every time. The memories faded like scars, until they could both privately look at them, or even start to reach for them, and feel less than they ever did before.

In the years that followed, they spoke carefully around those first two months of 2017, when Link came back to life and found Rhett waiting for him, when each helped the other recover from the close call of loss, when they loved with all of their hearts, held nothing back for the sake of protecting vows or images, and basked in the heat of a friendship set fire.  
For the fulfilling life they shared until their hearts had no more to give, it seemed a fair price to pay that in the quietest nights, they both thought back to those few surreal weeks and sighed, stricken by truths even their minds spoke in whispers: they had agreed in the end that their hearts were simply not meant for each other, that they would never long to entwine their fingers or bodies again. To hold on to the families, careers, and friendships they'd dreamed of, they had lied to each other that day, and to themselves every day for the rest of their lives. But this was the lie that let them be happy. It was a settled-for happiness that came with things stable and familiar, but it was happiness all the same.  
Even decades later, they chose to call themselves lucky, for even if they had not truly known what to do with it, they had lived through a love unlike any other, seen all the lows and highs it had to offer, and carried its memory in their bones, in years of stolen glances and knowing smiles. What they'd wound up with was enough; they were changed for the better and grateful not just for that time, but for all of the life after. Of this they were convinced.  
Almost.

 

* * *

_The End_


	27. Life After: Epilogue

He didn't know what he'd expected, but this wasn't it.  The room was white, all of it, from the marble floor to the long angular couch, the bricks around the crackling fireplace, and the heavy curtains framing a large window that overlooked a mountain forest, also dusted white with fresh and ceaseless snow.  He liked white.  It felt like home.

He was drawn to the couch, so he walked all the way around it, running his fingers along its plush back and grinning at the feel of velvety fibers parting under his touch.  The sofa was lower than he liked, and as he sank into it, he waited for a twinge to ripple through his back.  But when it didn't, when he was able to relax into the plush furniture without consequence, he smiled and sighed, somehow unsurprised and glad to finally have it right.  This made sense.

He'd always enjoyed his time alone, so when it seemed to take almost an hour for anything to disrupt the room's quiet, he hardly minded.  The voice that broke the silence was soft and sweet, warming him from the inside with its first words.

"You've never looked more comfortable."

The cushion at his right sank with the weight of a small body, and he opened his eyes without remembering ever closing them. 

"I see why," Jessie added, leaning sideways to drape her arm over the back of the sofa.  "This is nice."

He opened his mouth to speak, but found himself without anything to say.  She was beautiful, her eyes bright and skin practically glowing in the light of the white surroundings.  Her legs bent easily under her, and she moved with ease, somehow surprising him, though he couldn't put his finger on why.  Her hair cascaded in loose waves over her shoulder, and he reached for it, combing his fingertips through it and letting it slip between them as he narrowed his eyes, trying to reconcile why it seemed different, when its shade and texture seemed so familiar.

"I like your hair," he finally said, letting it fall from his hand completely and grinning at the sound of her gentle laughter. 

"Thank you," she said, stretching to run her hand through his.  He hummed at the sensation of her fingernails running along his scalp.  "I like yours, too, wild as it is.  You've got this little...wave.  This perfect curl.  Go look at it; you'll like it," she suggested, nudging him off the couch.  He stood and moved toward the fireplace, eyeing the mirror above its mantle.  When he finally stepped directly in front of it, he flinched at his reflection.

His hair was a dark, sandy blond, and his beard matched, thick and filling out a face nearly fifty years younger than the last time he'd seen it.  As the initial surprise wore off, he watched his mouth stretch into a smile, first crooked, then broad and toothy, beaming with obvious amusement. 

"Told you," Jessie said from the couch, reminding him of her presence.  He turned from his reflection and felt a surge of energy as he faced her, invigorated by the knowing smirk she kept in the corners of her lips. 

He crossed the distance back to the couch in three long strides and bent at the waist, crashing into her and wrapping his arms tightly around her ribs.  When he felt her squeeze her own arms around his shoulders, he turned his head and breathed in the crook of her neck. 

"You're here," he sighed, gripping her tightly as if the words might make her vanish.  But she stayed and simply stroked his back.

"Of course I'm here."

"You shouldn't be."

"You don't want me here?"

"No," he quickly replied, pulling back to look her in the eye and relaxing when he saw the warmth in her face.  "Of course I want you here.  But it's not...you aren't _supposed_ to be here yet."

"Oh, 'yet,'" she scoffed, rolling her eyes.  With her next words, she pressed her forehead to his and dug her fingers into his hair again.  "I gave you my heart for exactly this reason.  So you'd never have to be without me.  You carry me with you.  Me and whatever else you may have ever really loved.  Hence the overstuffed couch and perfect fire, I suppose.  You were always a glutton for the finer things."

Part of him wanted to laugh at the sincerity in her voice and the weight of what it had said.  But since she did not undercut it by pulling a face, he chose to accept it fully, embrace it as truth and revel in how good it made him feel.

When next they pulled apart, Jessie pushed to her feet and stretched her arms behind her back. 

"Where are you going?" he asked, feeling a pang of loneliness at the thought of her departure. 

"I'm going to make some..." she slowed, reading his face for the rest of her sentence, "hot chocolate.  I'll be right back."

When she disappeared around the sofa, he let her go, planting himself firmly in the renewed quiet of the room.  He watched the fireplace, yellow flames licking in soft, quick peaks above two picturesque logs.  The longer he stared into the fire, though, the more distracted he became by a shadow at the corner of his left eye.  Eventually, the hazy presence became so intrusive that he broke his gaze to turn and look at it.  He could only cock his head when he saw nothing but the rest of the light room. 

"You'll love this," Jessie announced, reclaiming his attention as she came back into view, holding a light wooden tray in front of her.  She carefully set it on the white coffee table and picked up one of the black mugs from the tray.  Rhett started to reach for his own, but stopped when he saw that he had two from which to choose.

"Are we expecting company?" he asked, opting for the drink closest to him.  He watched steam rise from it and expected Jessie to sit down next to him.  When she didn't, he felt a fresh smile growing in his cheeks.

"'Expecting company?'" she mimicked, rolling her eyes again and grinning down at him.  "I'll be around."

She lowered to press her lips to his forehead, and he leaned into her, absorbing a dizzying rush of unspoken love and approval.  This time, when she walked away, he watched her go, torso turning toward the back of the couch, eyes locked onto her back until she opened and slipped through a door he hadn't yet noticed at the back corner of the room.  As it latched closed, he felt the need for a deep breath and took it, holding his lungs at maximum capacity as his bones started buzzing with a new kind of warmth, an electricity that he could almost hear crackling in his ears.  He let the breath go and turned back around. 

And even as he'd nearly guessed the moment of arrival, he could never have predicted that he would turn right into a kiss, let alone one so deep and powerful that it drew the strength from his muscles, leaving him holding the sides of one of his favorite faces for stability and grinning at the sensation of faint stubble against his palms. 


End file.
